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
Related Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness... VACLAV HAVEL Magically, hopelessness gives rise to profound hope. STEFAN EMUNDS So in the sense that we were all dealing with that freer approach, yes, it was certainly one of the ... EVAN PARKER Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as... VACLAV HAVEL Perhaps measuring animal intelligence by comparing it to human intelligence isn't the best litmu... INGRID NEWKIRK Look behind you now. Do you feel in your heart a slight hastening of its beat, and a powerful s... NEAL SHUSTERMAN Yet human intelligence has another force, too: the sense of urgency that gives human smarts their dr... ADAM GOPNIK Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is ... HANNAH ARENDT Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not. OSCAR WILDE Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they ... LAURENS VAN DER POST Before I got here, I thought that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it didn't exist, ... JOHN GREEN I'm very critical of crime novels that use gratuitous violence to shock readers when it isn'... MICHAEL ROBOTHAM Nurturing a child’s sense of personal worth and therefore hope and dreams for a wonderful future i... WESS STAFFORD Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one s... NADINE GORDIMER Africa is the most weathered continent in the world; 75 percent of its soil has been degraded. You d... HOWARD GRAHAM BUFFETT Without a dog, I would have tassels on my throw pillows instead of little stubs of yarn that look li... W. BRUCE CAMERON Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absur... ALBERT CAMUS I don't have any doubts either about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Perhaps some mor... ANTONIO TABUCCHI The riot isn't seen in the movie, but it is alluded to. He has this one speech that gives a grea... DEBBIE ALLEN A life-threatening illness or two certainly gives you an awareness of your own mortality. It heighte... NORMAN FOSTER The most important thing about Jazz at Lincoln Center is the fact that it's the first time that ... RAFAEL VINOLY although perhaps not in the most traditional sense of the word. DAN BROWN It would be a lie to say that people are coming to adoption with joy at all times. Hope, perhaps, bu... JENNIFER GILMORE Education has fundamentally changed my life. It's perhaps the mission of my life. I'm wed to... BEV PERDUE Perhaps the most important reason for self-disclosure is that without it we cannot truly love. SIDNEY JOURARD Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known. The thought came to me that per... DODIE SMITH You can't have integrity for breakfast, but try and keep it because it is perhaps the single mos... F. SIONIL JOSE Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small... NADINE GORDIMER It's a lot harder to find fault with the mundane details of daily existence when you really, rea... ALAN BALL I'd always admired the intellectuals who had made the transition into politics - Mario Vargas Ll... MICHAEL IGNATIEFF Perhaps the only thing in my favor is that I am very tenacious. I don't take 'no' very w... KATHRYN BIGELOW Life is weird and wonderful like that, is it not. SONYA.E.WILLIAMS Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we m... VACLAV HAVEL Being present is being connected to All Things. S. KELLEY HARRELL, M. DIV. The very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is pe... ISAIAH BERLIN There is a moment that comes into every life when the right word, the right look even, could change ... ANNE ELISABETH STENGL Real life? Well, I just hope mine isn't investigated. They might find that I don't really ex... STEVEN WRIGHT Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is Intelligent Life in Outer Space is the f... ARTHUR C. CLARKE This is the most challenging activity that humans get into, which is love. You know, where we have t... LEONARD COHEN My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Perhaps . . . our lot on the earth is to seek and to search. Now and again we find just enough to en... JEAN TOOMER This is probably the most profound civil rights movement of our generation, without q doubt. JACKIE SPEIER This is probably the most profound civil rights movement of our generation, without a doubt. JACKIE SPEIER Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness... JüRGEN MOLTMANN 'What is this', and 'How is this done?' are the first two questions to ask of any wo... JAMES FENTON The single most important human insight to be gained from this way of comparing societies is perhaps... THOMAS HYLLAND ERIKSEN Perhaps we'll never be able to answer the question that is most prevalent, and that is why. DAVID ROHRER Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavor. WILLIAM COWPER Perhaps they thought I was on a fact-finding mission, never for one moment thinking that a man of my... JOHN PRESCOTT Common sense is perhaps the most equally divided, but surely the most underemployed, talent in the w... CHRISTINE COLLANGE Hope and purpose in this world is living as best as you can and maybe having life that gives back. B... NICK VUJICIC This is a new step in the life of Mount Angel Abbey and the seminary. It gives us a real sense of ho... ABBOTT ZODROW This is a new step in the life of Mount Angel Abbey and the seminary. It gives us a real sense of ho... ABBOTT NATHAN ZODROW I think that if there's one key insight science can bring to fiction, it's that fiction - th... CHARLES STROSS This place was truly the highest and the lowest of all worlds - the most beautiful senses, the most ... STEPHENIE MEYER There are books on our shelves we haven't read and doubtless never will, that each of us has pro... UMBERTO ECO No one forgets their first love. You're experiencing all those endorphins and all that dopamine ... JAMES MARSDEN There isn't a religion on earth that isn't damaging to the human race because every one of t... SUSAN POWTER It's remarkable, really. I think perhaps the most compelling thing about it is that it gives us the ... JEAN KREJCA All you need do is listen to very smart people and sift out the ideas that are unworthy or implausib... MICHAEL MORITZ Obviously, there is a sense of urgency about this week that's very special, that perhaps is differen... LLOYD CARR I read somewhere once that in the 1960s, fiction writers were troubled by the notion that life was b... WALTER KIRN Common sense is perhaps the most equally divided, but surely the most under-employed, talent in th... CHRISTIANE COLLANGE People who aren't complicated in real life come through as pretty bland on the screen. Most grea... GEORGE CUKOR Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themsel... RAINER MARIA RILKE That a great battle must soon be fought no one could doubt; but, in the apparent and perhaps real ab... EDWARD EVERETT I'm still very sure that painting is one of the most basic human capacities, like dancing and si... GERHARD RICHTER People say that life is short, but it isn't short. It's very long. FRANK ABAGNALE We have to get behind the scientists and push for a dementia breakthrough. It could be that we fear ... JAMES NESBITT Perhaps the most lasting pleasure in life is the pleasure of not going to church. WILLIAM RALPH INGE For a moment he felt a wild hope: perhaps this really was a nightmare. Perhaps he would awake in his... STEPHEN KING Variety is the very spice of life that gives it all its flavour. WILLIAM COWPER Perhaps I'm particularly serious, because I'm not unaware of the potential absurdity of what... DANIEL DAY-LEWIS Fashion isn't something you can buy; you need to have the sense of it, and most people don't... CARINE ROITFELD The problem of forgetting might not torment us so much if we could only convince ourselves that reme... GARY WOLF Evil gives you far more strings to pull. But I must say that I have never been interested in the psy... LARS VON TRIER Perhaps the most liberating moment in my life was when I realized that my self-loathing was not a pr... VIRONIKA TUGALEVA The point about hope is that it is something that occurs in very dark moments. It is like a flame in... JOHN BERGER Some people are so used to experiencing stress that they don't remember what life was like witho... ANDREW J. BERNSTEIN To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. SIMONE WEIL I just think that fiction that isn't exploring what it means to be human today isn't art. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE At one moment or another perhaps - not now - such an idea could be useful. AMR MOUSSA I loved being a soprano. It was one of my very favorite things in life, and thus far, and losing tha... ALEXANDER CHEE Just because we can't find a solution it doesn't mean that there isn't one. ANDREW WILES Be like the date that grows sweeter and sweeter , even though the soil that nourishes it is rocky an... ANITA AMIRREZVANI First, accept sadness. Realize that without losing, winning isn't so great. ALYSSA MILANO I've always looked upon the Ducks as caricature human beings. Perhaps I've been years writin... CARL BARKS Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own ... W.G. SEBALD Isn't it ironic that pay, perks, and benefits all cost your company at the bottom line, but auth... CHIP CONLEY At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that's why I've never been able to ... NICOLE KRAUSS Sometimes the probabilities are very close to certainties, but they're never really certainties. MURRAY GELL-MANN The 'Artful Tommy' will never change - and perhaps shouldn't. THOMAS HOVING I hope to build not the largest film and media studio in the world, but perhaps one of the coolest a... RONY ABOVITZ And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing , it m... RAINER MARIA RILKE All suffering is a consequence of a constant quest. A quest to follow a mirage, the mirage that is t... NILESH RATHOD Memory is often - perhaps usually - a distorting lens: what we think we remember isn't the way i... GRAYDON CARTER We hope to put a new roof on and get it re-sided - perhaps new windows. BRUCE PATRICK Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themsel... RAINER MARIA RILKE Brain surgery couldn't happen without the patient's own active voice to guide the work. The ... SAM KEAN New team members could perhaps resurrect the chain to be once again one of the better specialty reta... MARGARET WHITFIELD
More Vaclav Havel
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VACLAV HAVEL There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides... VACLAV HAVEL Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more
humane society will not emer... VACLAV HAVEL Hope is an orientation of spirit, an orientation of the
heart. It is not the conviction that somethi... VACLAV HAVEL Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It
is not the conviction that som... VACLAV HAVEL Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote mys... VACLAV HAVEL Just as many showed their solidarity with us when we were striving for freedom, so now we must show ... VACLAV HAVEL All respected domestic and international organizations agree that your demands are justified. Theref... VACLAV HAVEL For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the ... VáCLAV HAVEL What else but a profound feeling of being excluded can enable a person better to see the absurdity o... VáCLAV HAVEL The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to r... VáCLAV HAVEL Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually... VáCLAV HAVEL It is obvious that the monetary union among 17 very different European countries does not work. As a... VACLAV KLAUS I live in Europe and care about democracy and sovereignty of nation states there. VACLAV KLAUS To talk about planning an economic system is to talk in old terms, and I find myself sometimes havin... VACLAV KLAUS We will also allow state companies to sell shares to their workers and will pass a law allowing citi... VACLAV KLAUS I was paid to read Western economic texts. In a way, the regime paid for their own undermining. VACLAV KLAUS I never intended to be a politician or office-seeker. VACLAV KLAUS I do not consider the Lisbon Treaty to be a good thing for Europe, for the freedom of Europe, or for... VACLAV KLAUS We served on the editorial board of a literary monthly called Face in 1968 and 1969. He was a young ... VACLAV KLAUS The events in the square, of course, made a deep impression on me and many other parents. VACLAV KLAUS By the time I returned to Czechoslovakia, I had an understanding of the principles of the market. VACLAV KLAUS Privatization of the state-owned economy is not yet on the agenda. We cannot do it immediately; my c... VACLAV KLAUS It is what makes the reform process an art, not just a science. You have to develop a strategy that ... VACLAV KLAUS I'm absolutely convinced that the very small global warming we are experiencing is the result of... VACLAV KLAUS That means following a very restrictive fiscal and monetary policy which will squeeze the monopolies... VACLAV KLAUS What we want is to establish the rules of a market economy - not to plan its outcome. VACLAV KLAUS Then in 1969, I spent the spring term at Cornell University in New York. The invasion of August 1968... VACLAV KLAUS I also helped write the five-page statement of principles that Civic Forum issued in late November. ... VACLAV KLAUS Those of us who lived under communism for most of our lives were looking toward the Western world be... VACLAV KLAUS People like me who were engaging in brinkmanship with the party economic bosses and the open disside... VACLAV KLAUS The attempts to command the climate and decide about the temperature on our planet are wrong and arr... VACLAV KLAUS To pursue a so-called Third Way is foolish. We had our experience with this in the 1960s when we loo... VACLAV KLAUS The farther we go, the more the ultimate explanation recedes from us, and all we have left is faith. VACLAV HLAVATY Nevertheless, there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is... VACLAV KLAUS We must have the time to create strict rules so that property is not sold by Communist managers for ... VACLAV KLAUS I explained to the prime minister [Asgrimsson] that for the Czech Republic it was no choice, but nec... VACLAV KLAUS For the Czech Republic, EU entry was necessary for historical and geographical reasons. But I would ... VACLAV KLAUS a political farce which the leftists are playing against the right. VACLAV KLAUS In my opinion, this gives Icelanders all the benefits ensuing from it, but they have no costs connec... VACLAV KLAUS We would definitely vote for it [Iceland's EU entry], VACLAV KLAUS Nonsense. I would like to say, quite formally and clearly, that my government would never allow some... VACLAV KLAUS It's probably the craziest place to grow rice. Look at the evaporation in the summer -- it's 40 degr... VACLAV SMIL