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

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The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energet...
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Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.
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When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.
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This is a confusing and uncertain period, when a thousand wise words can go completely unnoticed, an...
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Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can co...
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Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn...
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If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.
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None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways...
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True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?
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My dear fellow citizens: For forty years you have heard from my predecessors on this day different v...
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Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations....
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As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the meas...
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Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness...
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Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have - by disrupting that order - a way of surprisi...
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I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.
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The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has...
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Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of...
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against its sense, its spirit.
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He tries to explain why man behaves most improbably, strangely, at variance with his nature, how it ...
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When the internal crisis of the totalitarian system grows so deep that it becomes clear to everyone,...
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VACLAV HAVEL
Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emer...
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VACLAV HAVEL
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VACLAV HAVEL
Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote mys...
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Just as many showed their solidarity with us when we were striving for freedom, so now we must show ...
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All respected domestic and international organizations agree that your demands are justified. Theref...
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For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the ...
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What else but a profound feeling of being excluded can enable a person better to see the absurdity o...
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It is obvious that the monetary union among 17 very different European countries does not work. As a...
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I live in Europe and care about democracy and sovereignty of nation states there.
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To talk about planning an economic system is to talk in old terms, and I find myself sometimes havin...
VACLAV KLAUS
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I never intended to be a politician or office-seeker.
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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
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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