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Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have -- by disrupting that order -- a way of surprising.


Vaclav Havel

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Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have - by disrupting that order - a way of surprisi...
VACLAV HAVEL Ideas do not have to be correct in order to be good; its only necessary that, if they do fail, they ...
ROBERT ROSEN I'm overweight, despise change, and rarely, if ever, initiate anything. Unlike my friends, I’ve ha...
J.C. PATRICK People who pretend to be your friend lead you up a garden path by saying everything that you want to...
GARY F EVANS... It is hardly surprising that many survivors of ritual abuse develop DID in order to preserve their o...
JOAN COLEMAN Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we m...
VACLAV HAVEL It got so bad that by the time I was graduated, the only reading I did was in order to get the grade...
R. A. SALVATORE Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as...
VACLAV HAVEL Only by so doing can we ensure the attainment of a new order in the Pacific, that of lasting peace i...
CHEN SHUI-BIAN If an asteroid is found to be at an impact trajectory with Earth you will have many decades of notic...
EDWARD LU It might seem that righteousness means you have to live up to God’s standards, like when you are i...
JESSICA NICHOLAS There is no 'natural' order, only the way things are.
HANNA ROSIN Furthermore, order is a necessary condition for making a structure function. A physical mechanism, b...
RUDOLF ARNHEIM I should have known that if any girl was going to disobey an order, it would be you.
KIERA CASS I think of myself as living so much outside borders or old categories that I choose as my leaders U2...
PICO IYER The kingdom of God is an order of government established by divine authority. It is the only legal g...
ORSON PRATT The Christian should participate in social and political efforts in order to have an influence in th...
JACQUES ELLUL I have little routines in the theater. Once I've established something, like the order of puttin...
IAN MCKELLEN As a general rule...people ask for advice only in order not to follow it; or if they do follow it, i...
ALEXANDRE DUMAS She sat down in order that we might stand up.
JESSE JACKSON If a man have not order within him
He can not spread order about him;
And if a man have no...
EZRA POUND In order to have an effect, he voted the way he did.
BEN MITCHELL It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep insi...
DOUGLAS R. HOFSTADTER It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep insi...
DOUGLAS HOSTADTER As children we are taught to count in order, stand in order and to live by order. If chaos and disor...
SHANE J VAN DER VELDE People know now that if they want them, they have to order them. Customers usually order two or thre...
AMY VICKERS Here is the root of all romanticism: that man, the individual, is an infinite reservoir of possibili...
T. E. HULME Just as the Internet brought the cost of disseminating information down by an order of magnitude, bi...
FRED EHRSAM Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness...
MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI The interesting thing is that New Order finished on an okay note. It was only after we split that th...
PETER HOOK Honest people remember stories in the order of emotional prominence, but liars will recount a story ...
PAMELA MEYER only through new words
might new worlds
be called
into order
SAUL WILLIAMS It is by fighting the discriminations of which young people are victims that we will re-establish or...
AZOUZ BEGAG It is by fighting the discriminations of which young people are victims that we will re-establish or...
AZOUZ BEGAG You have been created in order that you might make a difference. You have within you the power to ch...
ANDY ANDREWS If business and industry have a better feel when we might order an evacuation, they might be more in...
BOB LAY From the earliest days of man there has endured the conviction that there is an order of existence w...
THOMAS LIGOTTI Lena's real mom, Emily, knew that this was not the truth, but she also knew that Vaclav was not lyin...
HALEY TANNER Considering the wealth of poetic drama that has come down to us from the Elizabethan and Jacobean pe...
JAMES FENTON Money is only a means or an instrument that gives you the chance to fulfill what you have planned in...
SUNDAY ADELAJA As soon as I arrived in the Indies, in the first island which I found, I took some of the natives by...
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS Family is the theatre of the spiritual drama, the place where things happen, especially the things t...
G.K. CHESTERTON When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest.
ANTONIO PORCHIA In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-k...
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Something did happen, and I really don't feel proud of it.
DEYTH BANGER If we think there might be development proposals for an area then Government guidelines say we shoul...
ANDREW DAY For so work the honey-bees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled k...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Beethoven's music tends to move from chaos to order, as if order were an imperative of human exi...
DANIEL BARENBOIM A building or a town will only be alive to the extent that it is governed in a timeless way. It is a...
CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER If we have need of a strong will in order to do good, it is still more necessary for us in order not...
MOLE Everyone is aware that most of the built environment today lacks a natural order, an order which pre...
CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER An execution order hasn’t kept us apart before. There are ways to get around it. We will be togeth...
MARIA V. SNYDER The government is not behaving in a manner befitting a country which should respect the rule of law....
DROR ETKES Nature goes her own way and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE Nature goes her own way and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.
JOHANN VON GOETHE Nature goes her own way and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.
JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.
JEAN-LUC GODARD A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order.
JEAN-LUC GODARD An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
JEAN COCTEAU A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.
GEORGE ELIOT There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition...
ALBERT EINSTEIN Every believer should be an apostle since each believer is sent by the Lord Jesus to go and bear fru...
HENRY HON I'd always admired the intellectuals who had made the transition into politics - Mario Vargas Ll...
MICHAEL IGNATIEFF The real world is messy. It's only thinking that forces imagined order on it.
JIM GENOVESE Every so often you might have an outburst in the gallery. That's one of the most exciting things...
AMY KLOBUCHAR We don't know if the order exists in written form. It is his order that started the ball rolling on ...
ANDREW PATEL Few are sufficiently sensible of the importance of that economy in reading which selects, almost exc...
JOHN W. FOSTER Science must constantly be reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes and that the order o...
WILLIAM JAMES There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by order, method, and discip...
PAULA POUNDSTONE There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by order, method, and discip...
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look a...
JAMES BALDWIN Never give an order that can't be obeyed.
DOUGLAS MACARTHUR The human mind inherently seeks intelligible order. Thus the conviction that such an order exists to...
NANCY PEARCEY I like it that order exists somewhere even if it shatters near me.
ELIZABETH MOON Smith could 'read' the rocks on the surface. He realized that it was not random, that earth's proces...
TRACY GREGG In this case, they have the operators who work in our operator's shop downtown. They get an order to...
JEFF MCCRACKEN It doesn't let people's order be handled by anybody but themselves. Rather than having a customer or...
JOE WALD If I have found my journey to be a maddening tangle of wandering ‘rabbit-trails,’ a labyrinth of...
CRAIG D. LOUNSBROUGH I have never doubted the truth of signs, Adso; they are the only things man has with which to orient...
UMBERTO ECO We have made an exception, that in case of an emergency, the mayor may sign off on the purchase orde...
KATINA WHITLEDGE I think of 2002 as the last gasp of the old order. The first gasp of the new order might well be 201...
CAL JILLSON I shall always remember you-slyly, touchingly, but with great shouting and confusion-pumping hot wat...
GEORGE F. KENNAN How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they o...
LEONARDO DA VINCI If a man needs an elaborate tombstone in order to remain in the memory of his country, it is clear t...
OSCAR WILDE The language of freedom-fighting was so co-opted by the baby boomers in order to express their now-h...
ROMOLA GARAI I am talking about the responsibility of the poet, who is irresponsible by definition, an anarchist ...
JULIO CORTáZAR Oh, order! Material order, intellectual order, moral order! What a comfort and strength, and what an...
HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL An order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE That's very unfortunate to have a gag order like that on an incredible resource for the police depar...
PHIL ANDREWS Especially in a state that is so rural, like Vermont, in order to compete in the global marketplace,...
ELLEN KAHLER There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy,...
CHARLES DE SECONDAT [Those hoping that a national voter registry might bring some order to the chaos might have to wait ...
KURT BROWNING I have never had a client so audaciously violate a judge's order that quickly after being placed on ...
MALCOLM MONTGOMERY If that means starving ourselves, and starving the club of income, in order to make this parasite de...
OLIVER HOUSTON We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have...
ARISTOTLE We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may hav...
ARISTOTLE We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have...
ARISTOTLE Many have a vague idea that they must make some wonderful effort in order to gain the favor of God. ...
ELLEN G. WHITE The only secret knowledge we have is know-how and you can't break up know-how by court order.
HERBERT T. KALMUS If it were not somewhat fanciful to suppose that every human excellence is presented, as it were, in...
KARL WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT

More Vaclav Havel

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energet...
VACLAV HAVEL There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
VACLAV HAVEL If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job t...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless o...
VACLAV HAVEL Lying can never save us from another lie.
VACLAV HAVEL The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but ...
VACLAV HAVEL Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.
VACLAV HAVEL Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopeless...
VACLAV HAVEL There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must d...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes ...
VACLAV HAVEL Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.
VACLAV HAVEL When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.
VACLAV HAVEL A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clear-sighted awarenes...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes ...
VACLAV HAVEL The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serv...
VACLAV HAVEL The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful a...
VACLAV HAVEL There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
VACLAV HAVEL The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better ...
VACLAV HAVEL This is a confusing and uncertain period, when a thousand wise words can go completely unnoticed, an...
VACLAV HAVEL The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxicall...
VACLAV HAVEL I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of governmen...
VACLAV HAVEL There is only one art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, ...
VACLAV HAVEL The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning -- in other words, of absurdity --the more energe...
VACLAV HAVEL Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can co...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same a...
VACLAV HAVEL The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to r...
VACLAV HAVEL Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.
VACLAV HAVEL Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell...
VACLAV HAVEL If every day a man takes orders in silence from an incompetent superior, if every day he solemnly pe...
VACLAV HAVEL A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: inter...
VACLAV HAVEL If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.
VACLAV HAVEL None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways...
VACLAV HAVEL True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?
VACLAV HAVEL My dear fellow citizens: For forty years you have heard from my predecessors on this day different v...
VACLAV HAVEL You do not become a dissident just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. Y...
VACLAV HAVEL Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually...
VACLAV HAVEL Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations....
VACLAV HAVEL The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life but t...
VACLAV HAVEL Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because the...
VACLAV HAVEL Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look b...
VACLAV HAVEL It cannot suffice to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions. It is necessary to chan...
VACLAV HAVEL As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the meas...
VACLAV HAVEL Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as...
VACLAV HAVEL Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have - by disrupting that order - a way of surprisi...
VACLAV HAVEL The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to r...
VACLAV HAVEL But if I were to say who influenced me most, then I'd say Franz Kafka. And his works were always...
VACLAV HAVEL Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we m...
VACLAV HAVEL I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.
VACLAV HAVEL The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has...
VACLAV HAVEL The only salvation of the world today... is the rapid dissemination of the basic values of the West,...
VACLAV HAVEL People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one ...
VACLAV HAVEL Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It...
VACLAV HAVEL Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of...
VACLAV HAVEL The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and ...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as...
VACLAV HAVEL There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides...
VACLAV HAVEL The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serv...
VACLAV HAVEL Poles are able to reflect their history, they respect it. Who knows if anybody will remember when we...
VACLAV HAVEL against its sense, its spirit.
VACLAV HAVEL I still very well remember the moment in 1978 when me and my friends learned that Karol Wojtyla was ...
VACLAV HAVEL They deserve our admiration, not because they suffered in prison for 25 days, but because they assum...
VACLAV HAVEL That is very dangerous, ... in an absolutely legal way and in accordance with the wording of the law...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of th...
VACLAV HAVEL For 15 years the Government of Burma has refused to implement recommendations made by the UN and the...
VACLAV HAVEL He tries to explain why man behaves most improbably, strangely, at variance with his nature, how it ...
VACLAV HAVEL When the internal crisis of the totalitarian system grows so deep that it becomes clear to everyone,...
VACLAV HAVEL There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides...
VACLAV HAVEL Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emer...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is an orientation of spirit, an orientation of the heart. It is not the conviction that somethi...
VACLAV HAVEL Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It is not the conviction that som...
VACLAV HAVEL Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote mys...
VACLAV HAVEL Just as many showed their solidarity with us when we were striving for freedom, so now we must show ...
VACLAV HAVEL All respected domestic and international organizations agree that your demands are justified. Theref...
VACLAV HAVEL For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the ...
VáCLAV HAVEL What else but a profound feeling of being excluded can enable a person better to see the absurdity o...
VáCLAV HAVEL The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to r...
VáCLAV HAVEL Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually...
VáCLAV HAVEL It is obvious that the monetary union among 17 very different European countries does not work. As a...
VACLAV KLAUS I live in Europe and care about democracy and sovereignty of nation states there.
VACLAV KLAUS To talk about planning an economic system is to talk in old terms, and I find myself sometimes havin...
VACLAV KLAUS We will also allow state companies to sell shares to their workers and will pass a law allowing citi...
VACLAV KLAUS I was paid to read Western economic texts. In a way, the regime paid for their own undermining.
VACLAV KLAUS I never intended to be a politician or office-seeker.
VACLAV KLAUS I do not consider the Lisbon Treaty to be a good thing for Europe, for the freedom of Europe, or for...
VACLAV KLAUS We served on the editorial board of a literary monthly called Face in 1968 and 1969. He was a young ...
VACLAV KLAUS The events in the square, of course, made a deep impression on me and many other parents.
VACLAV KLAUS By the time I returned to Czechoslovakia, I had an understanding of the principles of the market.
VACLAV KLAUS Privatization of the state-owned economy is not yet on the agenda. We cannot do it immediately; my c...
VACLAV KLAUS It is what makes the reform process an art, not just a science. You have to develop a strategy that ...
VACLAV KLAUS I'm absolutely convinced that the very small global warming we are experiencing is the result of...
VACLAV KLAUS That means following a very restrictive fiscal and monetary policy which will squeeze the monopolies...
VACLAV KLAUS What we want is to establish the rules of a market economy - not to plan its outcome.
VACLAV KLAUS Then in 1969, I spent the spring term at Cornell University in New York. The invasion of August 1968...
VACLAV KLAUS I also helped write the five-page statement of principles that Civic Forum issued in late November. ...
VACLAV KLAUS Those of us who lived under communism for most of our lives were looking toward the Western world be...
VACLAV KLAUS People like me who were engaging in brinkmanship with the party economic bosses and the open disside...
VACLAV KLAUS The attempts to command the climate and decide about the temperature on our planet are wrong and arr...
VACLAV KLAUS To pursue a so-called Third Way is foolish. We had our experience with this in the 1960s when we loo...
VACLAV KLAUS The farther we go, the more the ultimate explanation recedes from us, and all we have left is faith.
VACLAV HLAVATY Nevertheless, there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is...
VACLAV KLAUS We must have the time to create strict rules so that property is not sold by Communist managers for ...
VACLAV KLAUS I explained to the prime minister [Asgrimsson] that for the Czech Republic it was no choice, but nec...
VACLAV KLAUS For the Czech Republic, EU entry was necessary for historical and geographical reasons. But I would ...
VACLAV KLAUS a political farce which the leftists are playing against the right.
VACLAV KLAUS In my opinion, this gives Icelanders all the benefits ensuing from it, but they have no costs connec...
VACLAV KLAUS We would definitely vote for it [Iceland's EU entry],
VACLAV KLAUS Nonsense. I would like to say, quite formally and clearly, that my government would never allow some...
VACLAV KLAUS It's probably the craziest place to grow rice. Look at the evaporation in the summer -- it's 40 degr...
VACLAV SMIL