The Power of the Powerless Quotes

“Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“In everyone there is some willingness to merge with the anonymous crowd and to flow comfortably along with it down the river of pseudo-life. This is much more than a simple conflict between two identities. It is something far worse: it is a challenge to the very notion of identity itself.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his or her ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe

“If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth. This is why it must be suppressed more severely than anything else.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“Truth must be integrated with love; morality is not whole without it. Love is the greatest strength of the powerless. Unity founded on love will never be coercion; power guided by love will never be violence. Love is all-powerful and will even overcome hatred. And only love can do this!”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe

“As the interpretation of reality by the power structure, ideology is always subordinated ultimately to the interests of the structure. Therefore, it has a natural tendency to disengage itself from reality, to create a world of appearances, to become ritual... Increasingly, the virtuosity of the ritual becomes more important than the reality hidden behind it.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“In an era when metaphysical and existential certainties are in a state of crisis, when people are being uprooted and alienated and are losing their sense of what this world means, this ideology inevitably has a certain hypnotic charm. To wandering humankind it offers an immediately available home: all one has to do is accept it, and suddenly everything becomes clear once more, life takes on new meaning, and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety, and loneliness vanish. Of course, one pays dearly for this low-rent home: the price is abdication of one’ s own reason, conscience, and responsibility, for an essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a higher authority. The principle involved here is that the center of power is identical with the center of truth.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“السؤال هو هل "المستقبل المضيء" هو بالفعل مسألة مؤجلة على الدوام "هناك". فماذا لو أن الأمر عكس ذلك, لو أن هذا المستقبل يوجد هنا بين أيدينا, وأن الغشاوة والضعف اللذان يلفاننا يمنعاننا من أن نراه في أنفسنا ونجعله واقعاً ؟”
― فاتسلاف هافل, The Power of the Powerless

“ان نظام ما بعد الشمولية يلاحق الانسان بمبرراته في كل خطوة يخطوها تقريبا. يلاحقه بالطبع مرتديا قفازات الأيديولوجية. فالحياة فيه متشابكة كنسيج طحلباني من الكذب والأدعاء. ان حكومة البيرقراطية تسمى حكومة الشعب, وباسم الطبقة العاملة يتم استعباد الطبقة العاملة, الإذلال المستشري للإنسان يفسر على انه تحرير كامل للإنسان, ويطلق على حجب المعلومات تداول المعلومات, والتلاعب بالقوة التحكم العام في القوة والتعسف في استعمال القوة حفظ النظام العام, وقمع الثقافة تنمية الثقافة. كما يفسر نشر التأثير الامبريالي على انه دعم المضطهدين, والحجر على حرية الرأي على انه اعلى درجات الحرية, وتزوير الانتخابات على أنه قمة الديمقراطية, ومنع حركة التفكير على أنه أفضل اللآراء العلمية العالمية, والاحتلال على انه مساعدة الأشقاء. ان السلطة حبيسة الكاذبين, لذلك عليهم ان يزوروا. يزوروا الماضي والحاضر والمستقبل كما يزرون الاحصائيات. يدعون انهم لا يملكون الآلة الشرطية الجبارة والمهيمنة. يدعون انهم لا يدعون شيء.
ليس مطلوبا من الإنسان ان يصدق هذه التعمية. لكنه يجب ان يتصرف على انه يصدقها او يقبلها صاغرا, او يتعامل بصورة مقبولة مع من يتبعها.
لهذا هو مجبر ان يعيش في الكذب.
انه غير مضطر الى ان يصدق الكذب. يكفي ان يتقبل الحياة بكذبها ويتعايش معه. وبهذا يدعم النظام ويؤيده ويجعل من نفسه جزءا منه.”
― فاتسلاف هافل, The Power of the Powerless

“The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his or her ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing. Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfil the system, make the system, are the system.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“توجد في داخل كل إنسان حياة بكل معانيها الوجودية:
في داخل كل منا جزء من رغبة في الكرامة البشرية, والشرف الأخلاقي, والخبرات الوجودية الحرة, وكمال العالم.
لكن لدى كل منا في نفس الوقت وبدرجات متفاوتة القدرة على التأقلم مع الحياة المزيفة, كلنا بطريقة ما يسقط في المادية الفاحشة والمصلحة الشخصية, في كل منا شيء من رغبة في الذوبات في جمع مجهول, ينساب معه بسعادة عبر مجرى حياة زائفة.
فالأمر ليس إذن صراع بين هويتين.
إنه شيء أسوأ من ذلك: إنها أزمة الهوية نفسها.”
― فاتسلاف هافل, The Power of the Powerless

“Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient;' he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, "What's wrong with the workers of the world uniting?" Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“(By the way, the representatives of power invariably come to terms with those who live within the truth by persistently ascribing utilitarian motivations to them – a lust for power or fame or wealth – and thus they try, at least, to implicate them in their own world, the world of general demoralization.)”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“….what else are parallel structures than an area where a different life can be lived, a life that is in harmony with its own aims and which in turn structures itself in harmony with those aims? . . .What else are those initial attempts at social self-organization than the efforts of a certain part of society…to rid itself of the self-sustaining aspects of totalitarianism and, thus, to extricate itself radically from its involvement in the…totalitarian system?”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“Why was Solzhenitsyn driven out of his own country? Certainly not because he represented a unit of real power, that is, not because any of the regime's representatives felt he might unseat them and take their place in government. Solzhenitsyn's expulsion was something else: a desperate attempt to plug up the dreadful wellspring of truth, a truth which might cause incalculable transformations in social consciousness, which in turn might one day produce political debacles unpredictable in their consequences. And so the post-totalitarian system behaved in a characteristic way: it defended the integrity of the world of appearances in order to defend itself. For the crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff. As long as it seals off hermetically the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, "The emperor is naked!"—when a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game—everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“We know from a number of harsh experiences that neíther reform nor change is in itself a guarantee of anything. We know that ultimately it is all the same to us whether or not the system in which we live, in the light of a particular doctrine, appears changed or reformed. Our concern is whether we can live with dignity in such a system, whether it serves people rather than people serving it.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“And yet it seems to me that the thought and activity of those friends who have never given up direct political work and who are always ready to assume direct political responsibility very often suffer from one chronic fault: an insufficient understanding of the historical uniqueness of the posttotalitarian system as a social and political reality. They have little understanding of the specific nature of power that is typical for this system and therefore they overestimate the importance of direct political work in the traditional sense. Moreover, they fail to appreciate the political significance of those "pre-political" events and processes that provide the living humus from which genuine political change usually springs. As political actors-or, rather, as people with political ambitions-they frequently try to pick up where natural political life left off. They maintain models of behavior that may have been appropriate in more normal political circumstances and thus, without really being aware of it, they bring an outmoded way of thinking, old habits, conceptions, categories, and notions to bear on circumstances that are quite new and radically different, without first giving adequate thought to the meaning and substance of such things in the new circumstances, to what politics as such means now, to what sort of thing can have political impact and potential, and in what way- Because such people have been excluded from the structures of power and are no longer able to influence those structures directly (and because they remain faithful to traditional notions of politics established in more or less democratic societies or in classical dictatorships) they frequently, in a sense, lose touch with reality. Why make compromises with reality, they say, when none of our proposals will ever be accepted anyway? Thus they find themselves in a world of genuinely utopian thinking.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“تكتسب "المدينة الموازية" أهميتها عندما تصبح المسؤولية متغلغلة إلى الكل ومن أجل الكل, عندما تصبح وصولاً إلى أفضل موقع لهذا التغلغل, وليس هروب من المسؤولية.”
― فاتسلاف هافل, The Power of the Powerless

“It is of great importance that the main thing - the everyday, thankless and neverending struggle of human beings to live more freely, truthfully and in quiet dignity - never imposes any limits on itself, never be half-hearted, inconsistent, never trap itself in political tactics, speculating on the outcome of its actions or entertaining fantasies about the future. The purity of this struggle is the best guarantee of optimum results when it comes to actual interaction with the post-totalitarian structures.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient.”
― Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to the automatism of technological civilization and the industrial consumer society, for they, too, are being dragged helplessly along by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in the post-totalitarian societies.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“It seems the primary breeding group for what might, in the widest possible sense of the word, be understood as an opposition in the post-totalitarian system is living within the truth. The confrontation between these opposition forces and the powers that be, of course, will obviously take a form essentially different from that typical of an open society or a classical dictatorship. Initially, this confrontation does not take place on the level of real, institutionalized, quantifiable power which relies on the various instruments of power, but on a different level altogether: the level of human consciousness and conscience, the existential level. The effective range of this special power cannot be measured in terms of disciples, voters, or soldiers, because it lies spread out in the fifth column of social consciousness, in the hidden aims of life, in human beings' repressed longing for dignity and fundamental rights, for the realization of their real social and political interests. Its power, therefore does not reside in the strength of definable political or social groups, but chiefly in the strength of a potential, which is hidden throughout the whole of society, including the official power structures of that society. Therefore this power does not rely on soldiers of its own, but on the soldiers of the enemy as it were—that is to say, on everyone who is living within the lie and who may be struck at any moment (in theory, at least) by the force of truth (or who, out of an instinctive desire to protect their position, may at least adapt to that force). It is a bacteriological weapon, so to speak, utilized when conditions are ripe by a single civilian to disarm an entire division. This power does not participate in any direct struggle for power; rather, it makes its influence felt in the obscure arena of being itself. The hidden movements it gives rise to there, however, can issue forth (when, where, under what circumstances, and to what extent are difficult to predict) in something visible: a real political act or event, a social movement, a sudden explosion of civil unrest, a sharp conflict inside an apparently monolithic power structure, or simply an irrepressible transformation in the social and intellectual climate. And since all genuine problems and matters of critical importance are hidden beneath a think crust of lies, it is never quite clear when the proverbial last straw will fall, or what that straw will be. This, too, is why the regime prosecutes, almost as a reflex action preventatively, even the most modest attempts to live within the truth.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“Patočka used to say that the most interesting thing about responsibility is that we carry it with us everywhere. That means that responsibility is ours, that we must accept it and grasp it here, now, in this place in time and space where the Lord has set us down, and that we cannot lie our way out of it by moving somewhere else, whether it be to an Indian ashram or to a parallel polis. If Western young people so often discover that retreat to an Indian monastery fails them as an individual or group solution, then this is obviously because, and only because, it lacks that element of universality, since not everyone can retire to an ashram. Christianity is an example of an opposite way out: it is a point of departure for me here and now-but only because anyone, anywhere, at any time, may avail themselves of it.

In other words, the parallel polis points beyond itself and makes sense only as an act of deepening one's responsibility to and for the whole, as a way of discovering the most appropriate locus for this responsibility, not as an escape from it.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

“إن الإنسان لا يصير منشقا لمجرد أنه قرر يوما ما أن ينتمى إلى هذه هذه الطبقة المرموقة، لكنه يصير كذلك لأن شعوره الداخلى بالمسئولية مع مجموعات العناصر الخارجية وضعته فى هذه المكانة، فهو يطرد من الهياكل الموجودة، ويوضع فى مواجهات معها . فى البدايه لم يكن الهدف سوى أن يقوم بعمل جيد لا أكثر ولا أقل، وينتهى به الحال فى معسكر الأعداء.
إذن العمل الجيد هو نقد حقيقى للسياسة السيئة. أحيانا ما يكون موفقا، وأحيانا أخرى لا يوفق فى ذلك. لكن الناجحون فيها يتناقص عددهم ليس لعيب فيها.”
― فاتسلاف هافل, The Power of the Powerless

“كلما تضاءلت مساحة تأثير أي نظام ديكتاتوري ، يتقلص تجاوب المجتمع معه حضارياً ، وبالتالي يفرض النظام الديكتاتوري إرادته بطريقة مباشرة ، أي بواسطة طرق مفضوحة وخالية من أي اعتبار للعالم أو تبرير لما يفعله .”
― فاتسلاف هافل, The Power of the Powerless

“إن الحياة السياسية بكاملها في معناها الأوسع عقيمة في المجتمعات التي تحكمها نظم ما بعد الشمولية, حيث لا توجد فرصة لأي فرد أن يتحدث في السياسة, فما بالك أن ينخرط فيها, تقوم الطقوس الأيديولوجية بملء الفجوة التي تنجم عن هذا الوضع. في مثل هذه الأوضاع يقل انشغال الناس بالسياسة, ويصير الفكر السياسي المستقل والعمل السياسي -إذا سلمنا بوجود شيء كهذا في أي صورة- أمرا غير واقعي وغير منطقي, يصبح بمثابة مجرد بعبة بعيدة كل البعد عن هموم الحياة اليومية القاسية.
وبالتالي تصبح لعبة طريفة, لكن دون جدوى. فهي من ناحية أمر خيالي, ومن ناحية أخرى شديد الخطورة, نظراً للعنف الشديد الذي تلقاه أيه محاولة في الاتجاه من قبل سلطة المجتمع.”
― فاتسلاف هافل, The Power of the Powerless

“إن الحياة "في الحقيقة" ليس لها في نظم ما بعد الشمولية فقط بعد وجودي (عودة الإنسان إلى نفسه), وفكري (كشف الحقيقة كما هي), وأخلاقي (ليصبح نموذدجاً), لكن لها فضلا عن ذلك بعد سياسي.
فلو أن الدعامة الرئيسية للنظام هي الحياة "في الكذب", فليس مستغرباً أن الحياة "في الحقيقة" تصبح تهديدا كبيرا له. لذلك يجب ملاحقته أكثر من أي شيء آخر.”
― فاتسلاف هافل, The Power of the Powerless

“هذا الأمر يقود بالضرورة الى ان النظرية, او بالأحرى الأيديولوجية في النهاية تتوقف -للمفارقة- عن كونها خادمة للسلطة, لكن تصبح السلطة في خدمة النظرية. وتصير الأيديولوجية وكأنها سلطة "امتلكت سلطة". تصبح هي نفسها ديكتاتور, يبدو أن النظرية نفسها, الطقس نفسه, الأيديلويجة نفسها, تقرر في أمر الشعوب وليس العكس.”
― فاتسلاف هافل, The Power of the Powerless

“To wandering humankind it offers an immediately available home: all one has to do is accept it, and suddenly everything becomes clear once more, life takes on new meaning, and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety, and loneliness vanish. Of course, one pays dearly for this low-rent home: the price is abdication of one's own reason, conscience, and responsibility, for an essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a higher authority.”
― Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe