Vaclav Havel

Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emerge.

Ownership is not a vice, not something to be ashamed of, but rather a commitment, and an instrument by which the general good can be served.

In my opinion, theater shouldn't give advice to citizens.

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

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.

Human rights, human freedoms... and human dignity have their deepest roots somewhere outside the perceptible world... while the state is a human creation, human beings are the creation of God.

Man is not an omipotent master of the universe, allowed to do with impunity whatever he thinks, or whatever suits him at the moment. The world we live in is made of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue about which we know very little and which we must treat with utmost humility.

This is the moment when something once more begins visibly to happen, something truly new and unique... something truly historical, in the sense that history again demands to be heard.

Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.

We live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.

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

The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimension.

As in everything else, I must start with myself. That is: in all circumstances try to be decent, just, tolerant, and understanding, and at the same time try to resist corruption and deception. In other words, I must do my utmost to act in harmony with my conscience and my better self.

Courage means going against majority opinion in the name of the truth.

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

There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.

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

I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.

Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning.

All human suffering concerns each human being.

The real test of a man is not when he plays the role that he wants for himself but when he plays the role destiny has for him.