Vaclav Havel Quotes

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.

The law functions as formal embodiment of a moral code, not as free-standing substitute for it.

Societies cannot move forward without law, and our constitution is the cornerstone of the law and our National Assembly is its umbrella and fortress.

You can't legislate morality.

Societies depend on agreed rules.

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

Law is the strongest link between man and freedom.

Laws are often made to express collective ethical principles, to establish a climate of opinion …

We all think we have our personal favorites. But when I say, "People shouldn't steal - is it true?" Everyone in a room of, let's say, a thousand people all raise their hands and say, "That's true."

Laws and rules of conduct are for the state of childhood; education is an emancipation.

Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience.

Morality is always higher than law and we cannot forget this ever.

A nation,” he heard himself say, “consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual’s morals are situational, that individual is without morals. If a nation’s laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn’t a nation.

Justice is as much a matter of fashion as charm is.

Do you know what morals are? Morals are an obedience to rules that people laid down to help you live among them.

'Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free Government.

Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them.

Certain other societies may respect the rule of force--we respect the rule of law.

Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong. Right is right, even if nobody is right.

The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds.

Morality is either a social contract or you have to pay cash.

Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.

Those who are most moral are farthest from the problem.

The system we have is one that protects my rights under a president I don't approve. That tomorrow we'll do the same for you. And what people have in common is their commitment to those shared rules. And if you have someone who was a challenger to the shared rules, that's unacceptable. And we've never seen that before. Not in a long, long time but we see it now.

Justice of right is always to take precedence over might.