216 Quotes by Vaclav Havel

What’s certain is that a totalitarian enclave like Cuba’s can’t continue to exist, so change will definitely come there, eventually.

Either we have hope within us or we don’t It is a dimension of the soul, and is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the World or observation of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart.

Evil must be confronted in its womb and, if it can’t be done otherwise, then it has to be dealt with by the use of force.

You do not become a ″dissident″ just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.

But if I were to say who influenced me most, then I’d say Franz Kafka. And his works were always anchored in the Central European region.

If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He’s not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he’s really needed.

You can’t spend your whole life criticizing something and then, when you have the chance to do it better, refuse to go near it.

English is the ‘language of liberty’ for nations emerging from years of cultural oppression.

People have passed through a very dark tunnel at the end of which there was a light of freedom. Unexpectedly they passed through the prison gates and found themselves in a square. They are now free and they don’t know where to go.