Vaclav Havel Men Quotations

The most important thing is that man should be the measure of all structures, including economic structures, and not that man be made to measure for those structures. The most important thing is not to lose sight of personal relationships - i.e., the relationships between man and his co-workers, between subordinates and their superiors, between man and his work, between this work and its consequences.

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 commonly shared and widely entrenched moral values and obligations, neither the law, nor democratic government, nor even the market economy will function properly.

A genuinely fundamental and hopeful improvement in "systems" cannot happen without a significant shift in human consciousness.

Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it.

The Declaration of Independence states the the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it.

People, your Government has returned to you!

Man is not an omipotent master of the universe, allowed to do with impunity whatever he thinks, or whatever suits him at the moment. The world we live in is made of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue about which we know very little and which we must treat with utmost humility.

If every day a man takes orders in silence from an incompetent superior, if every day he solemnly performs ritual acts which he privately finds ridiculous, if he unhesitatingly gives answers to questionnaires which are contrary to his real opinions and is prepared to deny his own self in public, if he sees no difficulty in feigning sympathy or even affection where, in fact, he feels only indifference or aversion, it still does not mean that he has entirely lost the use of one of the basic human senses, namely, the sense of humiliation.

Man is in fact nailed down - like Christ on the Cross - to a grid of paradoxes . . . he balances between the torment of not knowing his mission and the joy of carrying it out, between nothingness and meaningfulness. And like Christ, he is in fact victorious by virtue of his defeats.

Ownership is not a vice, not something to be ashamed of, but rather a commitment, and an instrument by which the general good can be served.

The previous regime ... reduced man to a means of production and nature to a tool of production. Thus it attacked both their very essence and their mutual relationship. It reduced gifted and autonomous people to nuts and bolts in some monstrously huge, noisy, and stinking machine.

The real test of a man is not when he plays the role that he wants for himself but when he plays the role destiny has for him.

As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.

Ultimately, power only really listens to power, and if government is to be improved, we must be able to threaten its existence, not merely its reputation.

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.

When a man has his heart in the right place and good taste, he can not only do well in politics but is even predetermined for it. If someone is modest and does not yearn for power, he is certainly not ill-equipped to engage in politics; on the contrary, he belongs there. 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.

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.

Man is a part of the world, and his spirit is part of the spirit of the world. We are merely a peculiar mode of Being, a living atom within it, or, rather, a cell that, if sufficiently open to itself and its own mystery, can also experience the mystery, the will, the pain, and the hope of the world.

For 15 years the Government of Burma (Myanmar) has refused to implement recommendations made by the UN and the situation is getting worse,

For 15 years the Government of Burma has refused to implement recommendations made by the UN and the situation is getting worse, ... In fact, the situation in Burma is much more severe compared to other countries in which the Security Council has chosen to act in recent years.

Follow the man who seeks the truth; run from the man who has found it.

I still very well remember the moment in 1978 when me and my friends learned that Karol Wojtyla was elected the pope. It was a moment of an immense joy for us. I even think that we were so delighted that we danced for joy.