Václav Havel citations (131 citations, Page 4)

Address to the Prague World Congress of International PEN Club (7 November 1994) http://www.englishpen.org/writersinprison/wipcnews/peninternationaldeeplysaddenedbydeathofvclavhavelaconstantchampionforfreedomofexpression/

“Our civilization has essentially globalized only the surfaces of our lives. But our inner self continues to have a life of its own. And the fewer answers the era of rational knowledge provides to the basic questions of human Being, the more deeply it would seem that people, behind its back as it were, cling to the ancient certainties of their tribe. Because of this, individual cultures, increasingly lumped together by contemporary civilization, are realizing with new urgency their own inner autonomy and the inner differences of others.”

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Václav Havel

The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)

“In late 1989, the profound transformation that took place in this country brought me here to Prague Castle. It all happened so suddenly that I did not even have time to properly consider whether or not I was up to the task, and I was sincerely of the opinion that I would just take it on for a few months until the first free elections.
Clearly, things turned out quite differently: I have now been here for more than thirteen years, if we discount the short break in the latter half of 1992.”

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Václav Havel

Farewell Address (2003)

“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.”

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Václav Havel

Letter to the downthrown Czechoslovak Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubček (August 1969), as translated in Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 5 : The Politics of Hope, p. 115

“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.”

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Václav Havel livre The Power of the Powerless

Source: Living in Truth (1986), The Power of the Powerless

“I believe that during the intervention of NATO in Kosovo there is an element nobody can question: the air attacks, the bombs, are not caused by a material interest. Their character is exclusively humanitarian: What is at stake here are the principles, human rights which have priority above state sovereignty. This makes it legitimate to attack the Yugoslav Federation, although without the United Nations mandate.”

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Václav Havel

Interview for the French newspaper Le Monde (29 April 1999); this statement is considered the source of the term w:Humanitarian bombing", frequently used about the Kosovo War.

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

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Václav Havel livre Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 3 : Facing the Establishment

“It has become clear that the legacy of the past decades we have to cope with is even worse than we anticipated or could anticipate in the joyful atmosphere of those first weeks of freedom. New problems are emerging day by day, and we can see how interconnected they are, how long it takes to solve them, and how difficult it is to establish priorities.”

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Václav Havel

New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)

“We introduced a new model of behavior: don't get involved in diffuse general ideological polemics with the center, to whom numerous concrete causes are always being sacrificed; fight "only" for those concrete causes, and be prepared to fight for them unswervingly, to the end. In other words, don't get mixed up in backroom wheeling and dealing, but play an open game.”

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Václav Havel livre Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 3 : Facing the Establishment, p. 83