Title: Summer meditations
First published: 1992
Description: There is only one way to strive for decency, reason, responsibility, sincerity, civility, and tolerance, and that is decently, reasonable, sincerity, civility, and tolerantly. For aware that, in everyday politics, this is not seen as the most practical way of going about it....
Anyone who claims that I am a dreamer who expects to transform hell into heaven is wrong. I have few illusions, but I feel a responsibility to work towards the things I consider good and right. I don't know whether I'll be able to change certain things for the better, or not at all. Both outcomes are possible. Thee is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.
A moral and intellectual state cannot be established through a constitution, or through law, or through directives, but only through complex, long-term, and never-ending work.... It is a way of going about things, nd it demands the courage to breathe moral and spiritual motivation into everything, to seek the human dimension in all things. Science, technology, expertise, and so-called professionalism are not enough. Something more is necessary. For the sake of simplicity, it might be called spirit. Or feeling. Or conscience.
Subjects: Politics and government, Political ethics
Places: Czechoslovakia
Time periods: 1989-