“At one time, the state of culture in Czechoslovakia was described, rather poignantly, as a 'Biafra of the spirit'. . . I simply do not believe that we have all lain down and died. I see far more than graves and tombstones around me. I see evidence of this in . . . expensive books on astronomy printed in a hundred thousand copies (they would hardly find that many readers in the USA) . . .”

“The kind of hope that I often think about…I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world.Either we have hope within us, or we don’t. It is a dimension of the soulIt’s not essentially dependent upon some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation.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 are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.”

“True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?”

“Our concern is whether we can live with dignity in such a system, whether it serves people rather than people serving it.”

“The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance.”

“There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.”