The quotations of

Václav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic

1936–2011

17 quotes, most often on Government, Truth & Lies and Responsibility.

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 5: The Politics of Hope
- Hope
Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.
Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 2: Writing for the Stage
- Humor
- Laughter
If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.
Address to the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London quoted in The Independent, London (24 March 1990)
- Comedy
- Presidency
There used to be a time when this country’s president could have delivered the same New Year’s Address he had given a year before, and nobody would have noticed.
Fortunately, that time has passed.
New Year’s Address to the Nation (1991)
- Clever Jabs
- Presidency
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.
Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 2: Writing for the Stage, p. 67
- Truth & Lies
The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.
International Herald Tribune (21 February 1990)
- Responsibility
The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power.
Living in Truth (1986), “An Anatomy of Reticence”
- Power
Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us, yet we understand our own lives less and less. In short, we live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.
The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)
- Knowledge
There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them.
Speech of October 1989, accepting a peace prize; quoted in The Independent, London (9 December 1989)
- Talking
We had all become used to the totalitarian system and accepted it as an unchangeable fact and thus helped to perpetuate it.
New Year’s Address to the Nation (1990)
- Government
- Responsibility
The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning — in other words, of absurdity — the more energetically meaning is sought.
Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 5
- Philosophy
If the world is to change for the better it must start with a change in human consciousness, in the very humanness of modern man.
Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 1: Growing Up “Outside”, p. 11
- Change
What is needed in politics is not the ability to lie but rather the sensibility to know when, where, how and to whom to say things.
International Herald Tribune (29 October 1991)
- Politics
- Truth & Lies
The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.
Letters to Olga (1988), p. 237
- Life & Death
The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him.
Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 2: Writing for the Stage, p. 72
- Character

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