Václav Havel Quotes

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There are no exact guidelines. There are probably no guidelines at all. The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world.

Václav Havel (Address for a receiving the Open Society Prize, 1999)

Classical modern science described only the surface of things, a single dimension of reality. And the more dogmatically science treated it as the only dimension, as the very essence of reality, the more misleading it became. Today, for instance, we may know immeasurably more about the universe than our ancestors did, and yet, it increasingly seems they knew something more essential about it than we do, something that escapes us.

Václav Havel (Speech in Philadelphia - The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern world, 1994)

The relationship to the world that the modern science fostered and shaped now appears to have exhausted its potential. It is increasingly clear that, strangely, the relationship is missing something. It fails to connect with the most intrinsic nature of reality and with natural human experience. It is now more of a source of disintegration and doubt than a source of integration and meaning. It produces what amounts to a state of schizophrenia: Man as an observer is becoming completely alienated from himself as a being.

Václav Havel (Speech in Philadelphia - The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern world, 1994)

Transcendence as a hand reached out to those close to us, to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe.
Transcendence as a deeply and joyously experienced need to be in harmony even with what we ourselves are not, what we do not understand, what seems distant from us in time and space, but with which we are nevertheless mysteriously linked because, together with us, all this constitutes a single world.
Transcendence as the only real alternative to extinction.

Václav Havel (Speech in Philadelphia - The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern world, 1994)

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Václav Havel Biography

Born: October 5, 1936
Died: December 18, 2011

Václav Havel was a Czech writer, dramatist and president. He is best known for his activism and his presidency of Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic.

Notable Works

The Memorandum (1965)
Unveiling (1975)
Letters to Olga (1988)

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