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We introduced a new model of behavior: don't get involved in diffuse general ideological polemics with the center, to whom numerous concrete causes are always being sacrificed; fight 'only' for those concrete causes, and be prepared to fight for them unswervingly, to the end. In other words, don't get mixed up in backroom wheeling and dealing, but play an open game.

Vaclav Havel#37

ActivismPragmatismStrategy

About this quote

What does it mean?
Focus on concrete causes rather than vague ideology.
In plain terms
Fight specific issues openly instead of general debates.
What can you take from it?
Action on concrete issues beats ideology.

Where it applies

  • protest planning
  • political activism
  • grassroots organizing

Putting it to work

  • pick specific causes
  • campaign openly

Questions to consider

  • What concrete cause do you fight?
  • Why choose open action?

Another view

Ideology sometimes guides concrete causes.

More from Vaclav Havel

  1. None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways in which that population can surprise us when there is the…

    Permalink to quote #36
  2. A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clear-sighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerality of everything hum…

    Permalink to quote #38
  3. The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him.

    Permalink to quote #35

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