You do not become a dissident just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.

Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician

“The Power of the Powerless,” Living in Truth (1986)