# RIP: Vaclav Havel



## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Playwright and former Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel dead at 75.
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-1219-vaclav-havel-20111219-5,0,225222.story


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## bassClef (Oct 29, 2006)

Seen people crying in the streets of Prague today.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

An icon in hard times.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Wow, I like this quote from him in the article:



> "None of us-as an individual-can save the world as a whole, but . . . each of us must behave as though it were in his power to do so," Havel wrote in his 1997 book, "The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice."


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I think he was who I'd call a great man.

I read his memoirs written while he was in prison, imprisoned by the Communist regime. He was straightforward and talked about what he saw as his own journey and the nation's journey. & also the East European region's future as a whole, post-Communism.

In terms of that, the people who imprisoned him were in the wrong, when the Berlin Wall came down they were history. People like Mr. Havel's legacy endures because he was correct in his thinking. Oppression does not work, esp. in the long term.

Anyway, thanks for posting this starthrower, I may not have found out otherwise. I do not read newspapers, etc. I hate their spin and ideology. Mr. Havel was an example of the opposite of them, he was a representative of better things and aspirations on this planet. I think his legacy will live on...


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Days of promise! Zappa and Havel


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Dang it! I just posted this in the Christopher Hitchens thread, but it belongs here:

http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/12/18/vaclav-havel-a-life-almost-too-full-to-be-true/

(The OP's link is at least as good as this one, so this is redundant and there is no particular reason for anyone to follow this one rather than that one, but I figured I might as well put it where it belongs.)


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## Guest (Dec 21, 2011)

Yet another of the great liberators of the last century who helped usher in the fall of communism has gone to that eternal rest, along with the likes of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II.


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

DrMike said:


> Yet another of the great liberators of the last century who helped usher in the fall of communism has gone to that eternal rest, along with the likes of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II.


I think Mikhail Gorbachev had a lot more to do with it than either of them.


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## TresPicos (Mar 21, 2009)

Always sad to see a true hero go. There aren't many of his caliber around.


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

DrMike said:


> Yet another of the great liberators of the last century who helped usher in the fall of communism has gone to that eternal rest, along with the likes of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II.


I'd like to think Reagan went somewhere other than heaven.


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