The Presence of Arnost Lustig (2013)

Actors

• Václav Havel (actor)
• Arnost Lustig (actor)
• Jirí Menzel (actor)
• Ivan Passer (actor)
• Eva Lustigova (writer)
• Eva Lustigova (director)
• Jirí Brozek (editor)

Genres

• Biography
• Documentary
• History
• War

Famous quotes by Vaclav Havel:

"Lying can never save us from another lie."

"The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning -- in other words, of absurdity --the more energetically meaning is sought."

"The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility."

"The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less."

"Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole."

"Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not."

"Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity..."

"Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life."

"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for .success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good."

"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out"

"There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side."

"In my opinion, theater shouldn't give advice to citizens."

"None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways in which that population can surprise us when there is the right interplay of events."

"The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it."

"The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both."

"Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it."

"The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought."

"I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions."

"I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect."