Václav Havel topic

Also known as

Vaclav Havel

Václav Havel, GCB, CC, (born October 5, 1936) is a Czech playwright writer and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and the first President of the Czech Republic (1993-2003). He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally. He has received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Philadelphia Liberty Medal, and the Ambassador of Conscience Award. Beginning in the 1960s, his work turned to focus on the... full article at wikipedia

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Oct 5, 1936

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Prague

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Czech Republic

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spouse	from	to	type of union
Dagmar Veškrnová	1997		Marriage
Olga Havlová		Jan 27, 1996	Marriage
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Quotations

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.

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.

A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clear-sighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerally of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action.

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.

A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit. A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.

True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?

The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning further than the author himself can see or perceive.

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.

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.

Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary master plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people's own failure as individuals.

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Prague
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Government Positions Held

office, position, or title	jurisdiction of office	from	to
President of Czechoslovakia	Czechoslovakia	Dec 29, 1989	Jul 20, 1992
President of the Czech Republic	Czech Republic	Feb 2, 1993	Feb 2, 2003
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Awards Won

year	award
1986	Erasmus Prize
1994	Philadelphia Liberty Medal
2002	Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award
1997	Prix mondial Cino Del Duca
2003	Ambassador of Conscience Award
2003	Gandhi Peace Prize
2004	Presidential Medal of Freedom
2003	Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Order (First Class)
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