Vaclav Havel

Keep the company of those who seek the truth- run from those who have found it

You can't spend your whole life criticizing something and then, when you have the chance to do it better, refuse to go near it.

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

It lies in human nature that where you experience your first laughs, you also remember the age kindly.

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.

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.

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

I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart.

The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle.

There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them.

Those who rebelled against totalitarian rule and those who simply managed to remain themselves and think freely, were all persecuted. We should not forget any of those who paid for our present freedom in one way or another.

Frank Zappa was one of the gods of the Czech underground, I thought of him as a friend. Whenever I feel like escaping from the world of the Presidency, I think of him.

Those that say that individuals are not capable of changing anything are only looking for excuses.

It was never the people who complained of the universality of human rights, nor did the people consider human rights as a Western or Northern imposition. It was often their leaders who did so.

It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.

The cliché organizes life; it expropriates people's identity; it becomes ruler, defense lawyer, judge, and the law.

Man is a part of the world, and his spirit is part of the spirit of the world. We are merely a peculiar mode of Being, a living atom within it, or, rather, a cell that, if sufficiently open to itself and its own mystery, can also experience the mystery, the will, the pain, and the hope of the world.

I feel that the dormant goodwill in people needs to be stirred. People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence.