Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Václav Havel (then President of Czechoslovakia, addressing the US Congress), 1990

As long as people are people, democracy in the full sense of the word will always be no more than an ideal. One may approach it as one would a horizon, in ways that may be better or worse, but it can never be fully attained.

In this sense you, too, are merely approaching democracy. You have thousands of problems of all kinds, as other countries do. But you have one great advantage: You have been approaching democracy uninterrupted for more than 200 years.

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