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Václav Havel Quotes

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Famous Václav Havel Quotes

“When civil society languishes, when the life of organizations and voluntary associations is curtailed, then sooner or later political parties will begin to languish as well, until, ultimately, they become degenerate ghettos whose only purpose is to elevate their members into positions of power.”

PoliticsPowerPolitical PartiesCivil Society
Book:To the Castle and Back: Reflections on My Strange Life as a Fairy-Tale Hero
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“The particular importance of the Ukrainian Orange Revolution is not, however, that it took place in such a large and important country in the former Soviet empire or that it inspired many countries still burdened with postcommunism, but in something perhaps even more significant: that revolution gave a clear answer to a still open question: where does one of the major spheres of civilization in the world today (the so-called West) end, and where does the other sphere (the so-called East, or rather Euro-Asia) begin? I recall — and I mentioned this during my meeting with Yuschenko — that an important American politician once asked me where Ukraine belongs. My impression is that it belongs to what we call the West. But that’s not what I said; I said that this was a matter for Ukraine to decide for itself.”

RussiaUkraineRussia Ukraine WarOrange Revolution
Book:To the Castle and Back: Reflections on My Strange Life as a Fairy-Tale Hero
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“vysvětlovali tradičním antidogmatickým způsobem: boj za velké věci – celkovou liberalizaci poměrů – vyžaduje drobné ústupky ve věcech méně důležitých, nebylo by taktické riskovat rozchod s mocenským centrem kvůli Tváři, protože je rozehrána vyšší hra. (Mimo jiné: pamatuji, že přesně týmž způsobem zdůvodňoval v roce 1968 Smrkovský, proč hlasoval v roce 1967 pro likvidaci Literárek, a přesně tak zdůvodňoval později Husák, proč má Smrkovský odejít z politické scény. Je to téměř modelový příklad autodestrukční politiky.) Náš argument, že nejlepší cestou k celkové liberalizaci poměrů je být neústupní právě ve všech těch "drobných" a "nedůležitých" věcech, jako je vydání té či oné knížky nebo vycházení toho či onoho časopisu, nebyl vyslyšen.”

LiberationPolitikaKomunismusúStupek
Book:Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvížďala
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“Again, I call to mind that distant moment in [the prison at] Hermanice when on a hot, cloudless summer day, I sat on a pile of rusty iron and gazed into the crown of an enormous tree that stretched, with dignified repose, up and over all the fences, wires, bars and watchtowers that separated me from it. As I watched the imperceptible trembling of its leaves against an endless sky, I was overcome by a sensation that is difficult to describe: all at once, I seemed to rise above all the coordinates of my momentary existence in the world into a kind of state outside time in which all the beautiful things I had ever seen and experienced existed in a total “co-present”; I felt a sense of reconciliation, indeed of an almost gentle consent to the inevitable course of things as revealed to me now, and this combined with a carefree determination to face what had to be faced. A profound amazement at the sovereignty of Being became a dizzying sensation of tumbling endlessly into the abyss of its mystery; an unbounded joy at being alive, at having been given the chance to live through all I have lived through, and at the fact that everything has a deep and obvious meaning— this joy formed a strange alliance in me with a vague horror at the inapprehensibility and unattainability of everything I was so close to in that moment, standing at the very “edge of the finite”; I was flooded with a sense of ultimate happiness and harmony with the world and with myself, with that moment, with all the moments I could call up, and with everything invisible that lies behind it and has meaning. I would even say that I was somehow “struck by love,” though I don’t know precisely for whom or what.”

Transcendent Experience
Book:Vaclav Havel: Or Living in Truth
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