"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." ~ Vaclav Havel
Articulate Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel (1936-2011) is a politician with the soul of a writer... A former anti-Communist dissident and playwright who has been hailed as one of the world's great democratic leaders.
"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well," he once said, "but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."
On this day in 1989, before his election to office, Havel was imprisoned for his writings and promotion of Charter 77, a brave human rights initiative that helped ensure the rights of his Czechoslovakian nation.
"Tolerance begins to be a weakness when it begins to tolerate the intolerable, when it begins to tolerate evil," he observed.
A leader in the country's six-week nonviolent Velvet Revolution, he was elected President of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and the Czech Republic (1993-). "We are at the brink of a new world," he said, "because the old world is no longer valid."
"The salvation of the world lies in the human heart."
