Vaclav Havel Quotes

All historical experience demonstrates the following: Our earth cannot be changed unless in the not too distant future an alteration in the consciousness of individuals is achieved.

A great revolution in just one single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a society and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of humankind.

People say history is boring, and that is true because people are boring. We haven't changed since time began. We're still the same. We've obviously made some changes. When we started, it was all about food, clothing and shelter. Now we watch 'Top Chef', 'Project Runway', and 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.'

Science, which has transformed the material world, gives man the power of transforming himself.

Art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciousness and drives of the men and women who could change the world.

As civilization advances, man grows unconscious of the primitive elements of life; he is separated from them by his perfection of material techniques.

The real transformation of the world comes not from what we are doing but from the consciousness from which we are doing it.

If the theatre has taught me anything, it's that when things change in the body, in the body politic, in the body of the world, in the body of the earth, in the body of the person, there's change. You never go back.

A better world could be brought about only by better individuals.

Nearly everyone is aware of dramatic changes in the world. Yet we continue to live in the assumption that we can ride out the changes without changing ourselves, coasting, as we have always coasted, on the historic wave of human development. What it will take to wake us up is a wave of equal size traveling in the opposite direction. That wave is already on its way.

The worst way to improve the world is to condemn it.

You cannot change the world if you don't change your own world first.

It's not fear that keeps me up. I mean, every generation has thought, this is the worst generation; the world's going to hell in a hand basket. The reality is, people are living longer, and they're living better.

Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable.

Institutions don't change the world in fundamental ways. The way the world changes is heart to heart to heart by individuals, not by institutions.

Only changed people can change the world. Start with yourself.

I think the world is changing and all that matters is that I'm creating things.

This is our world now, and those ancient people are dead.

Change the world. Build a business. Have fun.

The world is always childish, and with each new gewgaw of a revolution or new constitution that it finds, thinks it shall never cry any more.

Only when you question does society move or advance at all.

It is through good education that all the good in the world arises.

What is most needed right now is evolving human consciousness. Without that, science, technology, development, everything will go waste.

The world is changing. We're not really proceeding on a stationary basis.

He thought that the world would make more rapid progress without the burden of old people.