216 Quotes by Vaclav Havel

Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have – by disrupting that order – a way of surprising.

All human suffering concerns each human being.

The tragic element in modern man, not ignore the meaning of his life, but it bothers him less and less.

If I have accomplished anything good, then it’s mainly because I’ve been driven by the need to know whether I can accomplish things I’m not sure I have the capacity for.

Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations.

The world is not divided into two types of being, one superior and the other merely surrounding it. Being, nature, the universe – they are all one infinitely complex and mysterious metaorganism of which we are but a part, though a unique one.

I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart.

To serve grand ideas with a major work is not bad, nor is it all there’s to art.

Without the constantly living and articulated eperience of absurdity, there would be no reason to attempt to do something meaningful. And on the contrary, how can one experience one’s own absurdity if one is not constantly seeking meaning?