Vaclav Havel Quotes

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning -- in other words, of absurdity -- the more energetically meaning is sought.

There is only one art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth. Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth, it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all.

If your heart is in the right place and you have good taste, not only will you pass muster in politics, you are destined for it. If you are modest and do not lust after power, not only are you suited to politics, you absolutely belong there.

There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides, to distrust words, and indict them for the horrors that might slumber unobtrusively within them --isn't this, after all, the true vocation of the intellectual?

Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.

If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning -- in other words, of absurdity --the more energetically meaning is sought.

None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways in which that population can surprise us when there is the right interplay of events.

Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs. Thanks to Catherine Doucette

There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.