Quotes by Vaclav Havel

The following are quotes from Vaclav Havel:

A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clear-sighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerality of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action.

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.

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

Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary masterplan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people's own failure as individuals.

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...

Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it.

Society is a complex and mysterious creation and . it's extremely imprudent to believe in the fact it presents you with at a given moment, let alone to consider it the one and only true face.

The truth is not simply what you think it is it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why and how it is said.

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