Vaclav Havel Quotes
A person who has been seduced by the consumer value system, whose identity is dissolved in an amalgam of the accouterments trappings of mass civilization, and who has no roots in the order of being, no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his own personal survival, is a demoralized person. The system depends on this demoralization, deepens it, is in fact a projection of it into society.
Quotes to Explore
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A government capable of controlling the whole, and bringing its force to a point, is one of the prerequisites for national liberty. We combine in society, with an expectation to have our persons and properties defended against unreasonable exactions either at home or abroad.
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Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he does not, he just falls back into her and is swallowed up.
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The percentage of actors employed is pretty small, and if you're lucky enough to have a good run at it, you do have a sense of responsibility.
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Ethnic diversity adds richness to a society.
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The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.
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I thought Sarah Palin was the ultimate expression of comic outrageousness in a person.
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There was no United States before slavery. I am sure somebody can make some sort of argument about modern French identity and slavery and North Africa, but there simply is no American history before black people.
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Self-respect, the value of 'face,' is universal but is most pronounced in China, then in Japan where the Confucian ethic is most influential.
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I'm a really heavy sleeper. When I wake up I'm a terrible morning person.
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And I do believe that the way to change a society, to uplift people - not just their spirit, but to uplift their society and economic base - is through education.
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Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.
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A powerful person is equally cool with their flaws and things that aren't powerful about them at all.
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My mother was pragmatic, focused and extremely, exceedingly practical, and she was the ultimate self-determining person.
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What 'Deadwood' did was to talk about how capitalism started, how civilised society came in, and how that brought its own problems.
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Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.
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Modern society has evolved to the point where we counter the old-fashioned fatalism surrounding the word 'cancer' by embracing the idea of the Uber-mind - that our will possesses nearly supernatural powers.
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We're not going to create a more equal society by not prodding at it, are we?
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I'd like to see one person - just one - who would own up to having been a coward.
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It was an identity crisis. I was born and raised in France, but I never really felt French, so I needed to find something that I was more connected to. I used to go back to Tunisia every summer, but I was more into the language, my Arabic roots.
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Every start upon an untrodden path is a venture which only in unusual circumstances looks sensible and likely to be successful.
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Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on the accumulation of capital, but under perfect competition, all profits get competed away.
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A person who has been seduced by the consumer value system, whose identity is dissolved in an amalgam of the accouterments trappings of mass civilization, and who has no roots in the order of being, no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his own personal survival, is a demoralized person. The system depends on this demoralization, deepens it, is in fact a projection of it into society.
