Skip to content
quotesby

I think there are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended. Today, many things indicate that we are going thorough a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying, and exhausting itself, while something else, still indistinct, were arising from the rubble.

Vaclav Havel#89

SocietyChangeTransitionHistoryTransformation

About this quote

What does it mean?
We are in a transitional era where old structures are decaying while new ones struggle to emerge.
In plain terms
Old ways are dying and new ones are being born painfully.
What can you take from it?
Change often comes through painful transition.

Where it applies

  • periods of social upheaval
  • technological shifts
  • political reform

Putting it to work

  • navigate uncertainty
  • patience during transition

Questions to consider

  • How do we recognize transitional periods?
  • What defines an era's end?

Another view

It may oversimplify complex historical processes.

More from Vaclav Havel

  1. Today's world, as we all know, is faced with multiple threats. From whichever angle I look at this menace, I always come to the conclusion that salvation can o…

    Permalink to quote #88
  2. Periods of history when values undergo a fundamental shift are certainly not unprecedented. This happened in the Hellenistic period, when from the ruins of the…

    Permalink to quote #90
  3. An ordinary human being, with a personal conscience, personally answering for something to somebody and personally and directly taking responsibility, seems to…

    Permalink to quote #87

Related quotes

  1. The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

    Antonio GramsciAntonio Gramsci quote #3
  2. Today is The last day of an era past.

    Boris YeltsinBoris Yeltsin quote #8
  3. The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be on…

    John C. CalhounJohn C. Calhoun quote #12