Vaclav Havel Quotes

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
Vaclav Havel

Hope, Same, Sense

Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.
Vaclav Havel

Life, Hope, Human

Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.
Vaclav Havel

Laugh, Looking, Anyone

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.
Vaclav Havel

Success, Work, Good

As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.
Vaclav Havel

Human, Everything, Control

The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.
Vaclav Havel

Leadership, Power, Powerful

Lying can never save us from another lie.
Vaclav Havel

Lie, Another, Lying

Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.
Vaclav Havel

Life, Sad, Sometimes

Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it.
Vaclav Havel

Impossible, Around, Point

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
Vaclav Havel

Hope, Sense, Makes

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.
Vaclav Havel

Power, Heart, Human

Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you.
Vaclav Havel

Life, Work, Hope

I think it's important for one to take a certain distance from oneself.
Vaclav Havel

Important, Distance, Oneself

Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.
Vaclav Havel

Life, Struggle, Law

If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.
Vaclav Havel

Change, Job, Important

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought.
Vaclav Havel

Experience, Words, Meaning

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.
Vaclav Havel

Life, Him, Less

Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have - by disrupting that order - a way of surprising.
Vaclav Havel

Might, Order, Drama

Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.
Vaclav Havel

Time, Hope, Political

I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.
Vaclav Havel

Government, Words, Military

None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways in which that population can surprise us when there is the right interplay of events.
Vaclav Havel

Spirit, Surprise, Ways

The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.
Vaclav Havel

Alone, Often, Literature

There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.
Vaclav Havel

Truth, Understand, Stars

When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.
Vaclav Havel

Truth, Freedom, Complete

But if I were to say who influenced me most, then I'd say Franz Kafka. And his works were always anchored in the Central European region.
Vaclav Havel

Works, Influenced, Region

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Biography

Nationality: Czechoslovakian

Type: Leader

Born: October 5, 1936

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