EXISTENCE

'...I'm convinced that my existence - like everything that has ever happened - has ruffled the surface of Being, and that after my little ripple, however marginal, insignificant, and ephemeral it may have been, Being is and always will be different from what it was before. All my life I have simply believed that what is once done can never be undone and that, in fact, everything remains forever. In short, Being has a memory. And thus even my insignificance - as a bourgeois child, a labatory assistant, a soldier, a stagehand, a playwright, a dissident, a prisoner, a president, a pensioner, a public phenomenon, and a hermit, an alleged hero but secretly a bundle of nerves - will remain here forever, or rather not here, but somewhere. But not however elsewhere. Somewhere here.'

Vaclav Havel, To the Castle and Back, p.330.

OBSESSIONS

'You ask about my political credo. I am an opponent of every obsession, because I consider obsessions the most dangerous of social phenomena.'

Vaclav Havel, To the Castle and Back, p.326.

TASTE

'Again and again I realized how important it is to have a very ordinary thing: good taste. It's good taste above all that determines how long one should speak, how much one should reveal, how deeply one should probe; when to make a joke and when to speak seriously; when one should speak indirectly and when one should speak fully what one has in mind; how to make sure the conversation does not languish and that your partner is comfortable.'

Vaclav Havel, To the Castle and Back, p.323.

POLITICS

'...politics is a peculiar area of human endeavour: a politician seldom attains a really unambiguous, clearly visible goal that he can then notch up once and for all as an unqualified success. The opposite is more likely to be true: politics is a kind of dough that one is eternally kneading; no one can almost never never say: the objective has been achieved; I can now cross it off my list and turn to other matters.'

Vaclav Havel, To the Castle and Back, p.14.

POLITICS

'Politics is an area of human endeavor that places greater stress on moral sensitivity, on the ability to reflect critically on oneself, on genuine responsibility, on taste and tact, on the capacity to empathize with others, on a sense of moderation, on humility. It is a job for modest people, for people who cannot be deceived.
Those who claim that politics is a dirty business are lying to us. Politics is work of a kind that requires especially pure people, because it is especially easy to become morally tainted.
So easy, in fact, that a less vigilant spirit may not notice happening it at all.
Politics, therefore, ought to be carried on by people who are vigilant, sensitive to the ambiguous promise of self-affirmation that comes with it.
I have no idea whether I am such a person. I only know that I ought to be, because I have accepted this office.'

Vaclav Havel, 'The Temptations of Political Power' at: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/havel.html

POLITICS

'Why is it that people long for political power, and why, when they have achieved it, are they so reluctant to give it up?
In the first place, people are driven into politics by ideas about a better way to organize society, by faith in certain values or ideals, be they impeccable or dubious, and the irresistible desire to fight for those ideas and turn them into reality.
In the second place, they are probably motivated by the natural longing every human being has for self-affirmation. Is it possible to imagine a more attractive way to affirm your own existence and its importance than that offered by political power? In essence, it gives you a tremendous opportunity to leave your mark, in the broadest sense, on your surroundings, to shape the world around you in your own image, to enjoy the respect that every political office almost automatically bestows upon the one who holds it.
In the third place, many people long for political power and are so reluctant to part with it because of the wide range of perks that are a necessary part of political life - even under the most democratic of conditions.'

Vaclav Havel, 'The Temptations of Political Power' at: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/havel.html