Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emerge.
Vaclav HavelRead
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.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the erosion of moral values in society and the disconnect between thoughts and words.
Vaclav Havel laments the decline of moral integrity in society, suggesting that people often express feelings and concepts such as love and friendship in ways that do not align with their true beliefs. This separation leads to a degradation of the depth these values should hold, ultimately resulting in a morally contaminated environment where essential virtues are diminished.
In practice
During a motivational speech on integrity and ethics in the workplace.
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.
I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.
We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal's 'Pensees' and read, 'I am the great silent spaces between worlds.'
But she was waiting patiently. She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything. At seventy she had come to believe in time alone. ~pg 254
The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?
And so they are ever returning to us, the dead. At times they come back from the ice more than seven decades later and are found at the edge of the moraine, a few polished bones and a pair of hobnailed boots.
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep - he hath awakened from the dream of life - 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep with phantoms an unprofitable strife.
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