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Quote by Vaclav Havel

“It cannot suffice to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions. It is necessary to change and improve our understanding of the true purpose of what we are and what we do in the world. Only such a new understanding will allow us to develop new models of behavior, new scales of values and goals, and thereby invest the global regulations, treaties and institutions with a new spirit and meaning.”

Quote by Vaclav Havel

Author

Vaclav Havel, born on October 5, 1936, was the former president of Czechoslovakia. He was a playwright, politician, and a leading figure in the Velvet Revolution. Known for his unwavering commitment to freedom, democracy, and human rights, Havel's works and actions had a profound impact on European politics in the post-Cold War era. more

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“This is a confusing and uncertain period, when a thousand wise words can go completely unnoticed, and one thoughtless word can provoke an utterly nonsensical furor.”

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“The only salvation of the world today... is the rapid dissemination of the basic values of the West, that is, the ideas of democracy, human rights, the civil society, and the free market.”

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“There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides, to distrust words, and indict them for the horrors that might slumber unobtrusively within them - isn’t this, after all, the true vocation of the intellectual?”

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“The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning...”

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“The best way to make Communists is to put the Americans into a place where there were no Communists before.”

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“True, I used to see a lot of hope. I saw men tear down the veils behind which the truth had been hidden. But then the same men, when they have power in their hands at last, began to find the veils useful. They made many more. Life has not changed. Only some people have been growing, becoming different, that is all. After a youth spent fighting the white man, why should not the president discover as he grows older that his real desire has been to be like the white governor himself, to live above all the blackness in the big old slave castle?”

“How horribly rapid everything has been, from the days when men were not ashamed to talk of souls and of suffering and of hope to these low days of smiles that will never again be sly enough to hide the knowledge of betrayal and deceit.”

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“The beauty was in the waking of the powerless. Is it always to be true that it is impossible to have things strong and at the same time beautiful? The famished men need not stay famished. But to gorge themselves in this heartbreaking way consuming, utterly destroying the common promise of their greed, was that ever necessary?”

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“When you can see the end of things even in their beginnings, there's no more hope, unless you want to pretend, or forget, or get drunk or something.”

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“The scandalous question that hangs over modern government and excites perpetual outrage is about political money and what it buys. What exactly do these contributors get in return for the hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars they funnel to the politicians?”

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Book:Who will tell the people: the betrayal of American democracy

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