Havel Quotes

Enjoy excerpts from the vast collection of Havel’s writings that were selected for the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution by Paul Wilson. The writings come from Havel’s early public life, his years of dissidence and imprisonment, his presidency, and his post-presidency. They are passages from essays, diaries, letters, and political texts. For more Havel’s texts please contact Vaclav Havel Library in Prague: http://www.vaclavhavel-library.org/en/

To the Castle and Back May 4, 2015 In 2005, Havel spent several months in the United States, partly in New York, and partly in Washington, DC, where he began writing what he called his “strange little book,” his presidential memoirs. The resulting book, called To the Castle and Back in English, was a literary collage of three …
Summer Meditations May 4, 2015 In the summer of 1991, Havel wrote a series of thoughts about his conceptions of democratic politics and his hopes for his country, based on conversations he had with Pavel Tigrid and his then press secretary, Michael Žantovsky. It was published in English the following summer, under the title Summer …
Speech to the U.S. Congress May 4, 2015 One of Havel’s first major speeches abroad was made in this city, to a joint session of the United States Congress, on February 22, 1990. It received seventeen standing ovations. Address to US Congress, February 22, 1990 I have been president for only two months, and I haven’t attended any …
Speech at Union of Writers, 1965 May 4, 2015 On June 9, 1965, on the twentieth anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, Havel gave a speech at a conference of the Czechoslovak Union of Writers in Prague. This is a passage from the opening of his speech. “On Evasive Thinking” Some time ago, as we …
Letters to Olga May 4, 2015 In October, 1979, Havel and five other Czech dissidents were given prison terms varying from two to five years for their activities in the Committee to Defend the Unjustly Prosecuted, an adjunct of Charter 77. Havel was sentenced to four and a half years, and during that time, he was …
Letter to Dr. Husak May 4, 2015 In 1975, when the repression of the Prague Spring – called “normalization” – was more or less complete, Havel wrote an open letter to Gustav Husák, who was then the general secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, warning of the dangerous consequences of the repression of normal social life …
Intro to several plays printed by 68 Publishers May 4, 2015 In the mid-1980s, Havel wrote an introduction to an anthology of his plays published in Toronto, by 68 Publishers, because he was still banned at home. Here are two passages from that introduction, later published as an essay called “Second Wind.” “Thanks to the apparent disadvantage of coming from a …
From Self-Portrait, 1964 May 4, 2015 This is one of the earliest summaries we have of Václav Havel’s early life. It was written, with evident reluctance, by Havel himself, in his 28th year, when only one of his full-length plays, The Garden Party, had been performed in public. Self-portrait 1964 When the editors of Divadlo magazine …
Disturbing the Peace May 4, 2015 Between 1985 and 1986, Havel conducted a series of interviews with the Czech journalist Karel Hvížd’ala, who was living in West Germany at the time. In Czech, the resulting book was a kind of confessional autobiography, called Long-Distance Interrogation. The English translation was published in the spring of 1990, and …
1990 New Year’s Speech May 4, 2015 One outcome of the Velvet Revolution, which began twenty-five years ago this month, is that in late Deccember, 1989, Havel was elected president of his country. On New Year’s Day, 1990, he gave his first “state-of-the-nation” address to the country on national television.  “New Year’s Address to the Nation,’ January …

The Vaclav Havel Center