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Václav Havel
(5 Oct 1936 - 18 Dec 2011)
Czech playwright, activist and political leader who became president of Czechoslovakia in Dec 1989-1992.
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Science Quotes by Václav Havel (2 quotes)
Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.
— Václav Havel
In 'Letter to Dr. Gustáv Husák', Václav Havel: Or Living in Truth (1986), Pt. 1, 23.
We must draw our standards from the natural world. … We must honor with the humility of the wise the bounds of that natural world and the mystery which lies beyond them, admitting that there is something in the order of being which evidently exceeds all our competence.
— Václav Havel
In speech 'Politics and Conscience' written upon receiving an honorary degree from the University of Toulouse, delivered by Tom Stoppard because Havel was forbidden to travel abroad. First published in Czech, collected in The Natural World as Political Problem: Essays on Modern Man (1984). As translated by Erazim Kohák and Roger Scruton in Salisbury Review (Jan 1985), No. 2.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
