Vaclav Havel Quotes

“Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience. I first became involved with the Czech opposition in 1968 when it was an intoxicating and celebrated cause. Then, during the depressing 1970s and 1980s I was a member of a routine committee that tried with limited success to help the reduced forces of Czech dissent to stay nourished (and published). The most pregnant moment of that commitment was one that I managed to miss at the time: I passed an afternoon with Zdenek Mlynar, exiled former secretary of the Czech Communist Party, who in the bleak early 1950s in Moscow had formed a friendship with a young Russian militant with an evident sense of irony named Mikhail Sergeyevitch Gorbachev. In 1988 I was arrested in Prague for attending a meeting of one of Vaclav Havel's 'Charter 77' committees. That outwardly exciting experience was interesting precisely because of its almost Zen-like tedium. I had gone to Prague determined to be the first visiting writer not to make use of the name Franz Kafka, but the numbing bureaucracy got the better of me. When I asked why I was being detained, I was told that I had no need to know the reason! Totalitarianism is itself a cliché (as well as a tundra of pulverizing boredom) and it forced the cliché upon me in turn. I did have to mention Kafka in my eventual story. The regime fell not very much later, as I had slightly foreseen in that same piece that it would. (I had happened to notice that the young Czechs arrested with us were not at all frightened by the police, as their older mentors had been and still were, and also that the police themselves were almost fatigued by their job. This was totalitarianism practically yawning itself to death.) A couple of years after that I was overcome to be invited to an official reception in Prague, to thank those who had been consistent friends through the stultifying years of what 'The Party' had so perfectly termed 'normalization.' As with my tiny moment with Nelson Mandela, a whole historic stretch of nothingness and depression, combined with the long and deep insult of having to be pushed around by boring and mediocre people, could be at least partially canceled and annealed by one flash of humor and charm and generosity.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Lying can never save us from another lie.”
― Václav Havel

“I'd grown fond of quoting Václav Havel, the great Czech leader who had said that "hope" was the one thing that people struggling in Eastern Europe needed during the era of Soviet domination.

Havel had said that people struggling for independence wanted money and recognition from other countries; they wanted more criticism of the Soviet empire from the West and more diplomatic pressure. But Havel had said that these were things they wanted; the only thing they needed was hope. Not that pie in the sky stuff, not a preference for optimism over pessimism, but rather "an orientation of the spirit." The kind of hope that creates a willingness to position oneself in a hopeless place and be a witness, that allows one to believe in a better future, even in the face of abusive power. That kind of hope makes one strong.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy

“Vždy přísně rozlišuji mezi nadějí a optimismem. Optimista je člověk, který si myslí, že vše dopadne co nejlépe. Pesimista si myslí, že vše dopadne co nejhůře. Nevím, jak věci dopadnou. Proto nejsem optimista ani pesimista. Chovám v sobě naději, což je něco jiného než optimismus nebo pesimismus, protože to jsou jakési odhady či prognózy budoucnosti. Naděje je stavem ducha. Je to stav, bez něhož život ztrácí veškerý význam. Pokud chci žít, musím mít naději.”
― Anna Freimanová, Václav Havel: Má to smysl! Výbor z rozhovorů 1964–1989

“In some ways the soviets simplified who the enemy was”, Havel said, “Today autocrats are more sophisticated, they stand for election while slowly undermining institutions that make democracy possible. They champion free markets while engaging with the same corruption cronyism and exploitation that existed in the past".”
― Barack Obama, A Promised Land