The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.

Meaning of the quote

The key to making the world a better place is not to look outside, but to look inside ourselves. We each have the ability to think deeply, to be kind, and to take responsibility for our actions. If we focus on these human qualities within us, we can work to improve the world around us.

About Vaclav Havel

Vaclav Havelwas a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright and dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992, prior to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on 31 December, before he became the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003.

More about the author

More quotes from Vaclav Havel

Isn’t it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

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

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

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

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

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.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

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

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

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.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

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.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

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.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

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.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don’t, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

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

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

Lying can never save us from another lie.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Vaclav Havel

Czech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936-2011)