A genuinely fundamental and hopeful improvement in “systems” cannot happen without a significant shift in human consciousness.
All human suffering concerns each human being.
Evil must be confronted in its womb and, if it can’t be done otherwise, then it has to be dealt with by the use of force.
Human rights, human freedoms, and human dignity have their deepest roots somewhere outside the perceptible world. These values are as powerful as they are because, under certain circumstances, people accept them without compulsion and are willing to die for them.
If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.
Truth is not merely what we are thinking, but also why, to whom and under what circumstances we say it.
When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.
It was never the people who complained of the universality of human rights, nor did the people consider human rights as a Western or Northern imposition. It was often their leaders who did so.
Our country, if that is what we want, can now permanently radiate love, understanding, the power of the spirit and of ideas. It is precisely this glow that we can offer as our specific contribution to international politics.
Self-confidence is not pride. Just the contrary: only a person or a nation that is self-confident, in the best sense of the word, is capable of listening to others, accepting them as equals, forgiving its enemies and regretting its own guilt.
I think its important for one to take a certain distance from oneself.
Those who rebelled against totalitarian rule and those who simply managed to remain themselves and think freely, were all persecuted. We should not forget any of those who paid for our present freedom in one way or another.
Either we have hope within us or we don’t. It is a dimension of the soul, and is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart.
If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He’s not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he’s really needed.
In my opinion, theater shouldn’t give advice to citizens.
What’s certain is that a totalitarian enclave like Cuba’s can’t continue to exist, so change will definitely come there, eventually.
There’s always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
Sober perseverance is more effective than enthusiastic emotions, which are all too capable of being transferred, with little difficulty, to something different each day.
People have passed through a very dark tunnel at the end of which there was a light of freedom. Unexpectedly they passed through the prison gates and found themselves in a square. They are now free and they don’t know where to go.
Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning.