Vaclav Klaus Quotes

#1. EU expansion is, unfortunately, continuing without a constitution, as a gradual process of standardization - and that's far more dangerous. It is very difficult to slow down this process, which is being pushed forward without significant public participation.

Vaclav Klaus

#2. That means following a very restrictive fiscal and monetary policy which will squeeze the monopolies and cut their subsidies. On the micro level we will allow other economic agents, both domestic and foreign, to compete with them.

Vaclav Klaus

#3. I do not consider the Lisbon Treaty to be a good thing for Europe, for the freedom of Europe, or for the Czech Republic.

Vaclav Klaus

#4. The best environment for man is the environment of liberty

Vaclav Klaus

#5. We served on the editorial board of a literary monthly called Face in 1968 and 1969. He was a young writer, and I was also interested in broad cultural issues. We agreed on all major issues and became friends.

Vaclav Klaus

#6. I never intended to be a politician or office-seeker.

Vaclav Klaus

#7. Environmentalism is a dangerous ideology endangering human freedom.

Vaclav Klaus

#8. Nevertheless, there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology, if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming.

Vaclav Klaus

#9. People like me who were engaging in brinkmanship with the party economic bosses and the open dissidents who were being arrested were pursuing a common goal in different ways.

Vaclav Klaus

#10. To talk about planning an economic system is to talk in old terms, and I find myself sometimes having to teach Westers about what the market really means.

Vaclav Klaus

#11. Those of us who lived under communism for most of our lives were looking toward the Western world because of its values, emphasis on democracy, individual liberties and freedom, and economic prosperity.

Vaclav Klaus

#12. I also helped write the five-page statement of principles that Civic Forum issued in late November. That was the first public expression of what the new government wanted to do.

Vaclav Klaus

#13. To pursue a so-called Third Way is foolish. We had our experience with this in the 1960s when we looked for a socialism with a human face. It did not work, and we must be explicit that we are not aiming for a more efficient version of a system that has failed.

Vaclav Klaus

#14. EU didn't advance our [Eastern Europe] democracy by a single millimeter.

Vaclav Klaus

#15. I'm absolutely convinced that the very small global warming we are experiencing is the result of natural causes. It's a cyclical phenomenon in the history of the Earth. The role of man is very small, almost negligible.

Vaclav Klaus

#16. Czech Republic is an important part of central Europe. It's clear that we must participate in European integration. I am convinced that the Czech Republic - or, in the past, Czechoslovakia - would have been one of the founding members of the EU if it hadn't been for the communist takeover in 1948.

Vaclav Klaus

#17. I was paid to read Western economic texts. In a way, the regime paid for their own undermining.

Vaclav Klaus

#18. Then in 1969, I spent the spring term at Cornell University in New York. The invasion of August 1968 had already happened, but the hardline regime took several months to crack down on dissidents.

Vaclav Klaus

#19. The attempts to command the climate and decide about the temperature on our planet are wrong and arrogant. I wrote a book about it which was published in English under the title 'Blue Planet in Green Shackles.'

Vaclav Klaus

#20. By the time I returned to Czechoslovakia, I had an understanding of the principles of the market.

Vaclav Klaus

#21. The events in the square, of course, made a deep impression on me and many other parents.

Vaclav Klaus

#22. We will also allow state companies to sell shares to their workers and will pass a law allowing citizens to start companies of their own with no limits on the number of employees or on the firm's output.

Vaclav Klaus

#23. It is obvious that the monetary union among 17 very different European countries does not work. As an economist, I know that the Eurozone is not an optimum currency area, as defined in economic theory.

Vaclav Klaus

#24. What we want is to establish the rules of a market economy - not to plan its outcome.

Vaclav Klaus

#25. You cannot have democratic accountability in anything bigger than a nation state.

Vaclav Klaus

#26. Privatization of the state-owned economy is not yet on the agenda. We cannot do it immediately; my colleagues would not agree to it. But we must put all forms of ownership on an equal footing immediately and let different types of ownership compete with the state firms.

Vaclav Klaus

#27. What is concisely referred to as global warming, is a fatal mistake of the present time.

Vaclav Klaus

#28. The message of [Fahernheit 9/11] is very weak and propagandistic ... We were used to such messages in the communist days. Everybody has open eyes and can understand that this is propaganda. It was a weak film that tells us nothing new.

Vaclav Klaus

#29. Common foreign policy is completely unnecessary. The various European countries have widely differing priorities, goals and prejudices. It would be wrong to force them all to follow the same course.

Vaclav Klaus

#30. I live in Europe and care about democracy and sovereignty of nation states there.

Vaclav Klaus

#31. Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.

Vaclav Klaus

#32. My main concern is the political dimension of European integration. This is one of the most important issues of all, as far as I'm concerned. It has to do with our past, with our sensitivity, perhaps even our hypersensitivity in this regard.

Vaclav Klaus

#33. The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity, is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.

Vaclav Klaus

#34. I don't think there is any global warming. I don't see the statistical data for that.

Vaclav Klaus

#35. We must have the time to create strict rules so that property is not sold by Communist managers for a low price. They often get payments under the table to sell to the first bidder. This does not build public support for a market economy.

Vaclav Klaus

#36. It is what makes the reform process an art, not just a science. You have to develop a strategy that tells you what reform measures you should follow and in what sequence.

Vaclav Klaus

#37. "not a scientific body capable of accurately assessing the facts about global warming".

Vaclav Klaus

#38. Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism.

Vaclav Klaus

#39. I am afraid there are people who want to stop the economic growth, the rise in the standard of living (though not their own) and the ability of man to use the expanding wealth, science and technology for solving the actual pressing problems of mankind, especially of the developing countries.

Vaclav Klaus