After 1968 the restored communist regime required all Czech rock musicians to sit a written exam in Marxism Leninism

No civilization, no matter how mighty it may appear to itself, is indestructible.

There can be no understanding without that sympathy which puts us, through the imagination, and (another's) situation.

The bacteriologist, often risking his life to find cures for lethal afflictions, was another kind of imperial hero, as brave in his way as the soldier-explorer.

The dead outnumber the living fourteen to one, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril

I wrote this book because I had formed a strong impression that the people currently living were paying insufficient attention to the dead.

Not the last time in Western history, the revolutionaries armed themselves with a new religion to steel themselves for greater outrageous.

Institutions or products of culture. But they formalize a set of norms.

My mom used to say that faith and fear can't exist simultaneously in the mind any more than light and dark can exist simultaneously in the same room.

if only people stopped acting like they've been asked to donate a lung every time somebody asks for something the world would be a better place

Perfection is out of the question.

If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.

Damn it, nobody knows what is beautiful and what is not. They do not understand new things.

I'm my own most merciless critic onstage.

The world like our heads was meant to be escaped from, they are prisons world and head alike.

The easiest way to avoid wrong notes is to never open your mouth and sing. What a mistake that would be.

The unfulfilling job is not the failure; not pursuing your dreams is the real failure. Developing a vision requires conquering your fears and finding motivation from within.