Top 53 Quotes & Sayings by Vaclav Klaus

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.'

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Human relations tend to be more difficult when you're dealing with someone who weighs 30 kilograms more than you do. That's when you worry about whether a well-meaning gesture could produce complications. We have no problems with countries like Madagascar or Bolivia, for example. But Germany is our neighbor and we have a shared past. Besides, Germany is powerful and ambitious and more than four times as large as we are. It makes complete sense that we would act cautiously. It's simply Realpolitik.

Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it’s a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It’s neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment.

I was 25 years old and pursuing my doctorate in economics when I was allowed to spend six months of postgraduate studies in Naples, Italy. I read the Western economic textbooks and also the more general work of people like Hayek. By the time I returned to Czechoslovakia, I had an understanding of the principles of the market. In 1968, I was glad at the political liberalism of the Dubcek Prague Spring, but I was very critical of the Third Way they pursued in economics.

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

Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism.

And finally, there is another danger: the emergence of nonideological but very aggressive 'isms,' which are really quite new. Let me at least name them: We all care about human rights, but I am afraid of 'human rightism.' We all want to have a healthy environment, but I see the danger in environmentalism. To put it politically correctly, I admire the second gender, but I fear feminism. We all are enriched by other cultures, but not by multiculturalism. I am aware of the importance of voluntary associations, but I fear NGOism.

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

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.

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

The climate change debate is basically not about science; it is about ideology. It is not about global temperature; it is about the concept of human society. It is not about nature or scientific ecology; it is about environmentalism, about one - recently born - dirigistic and collectivistic ideology, which goes against freedom and free markets.

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.”

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.

Environmentalism is a dangerous ideology endangering human freedom.

Being often with many leading politicians, I feel frustrated that they do not listen. They already know. They fully subscribed to the idea that talking about 'saving the planet' is an effective way to show their 'caring' for humanity and that it is the easiest way to maximize votes irrespective of any relevant activity which would aim at the real needs of people. The global warming dogma has become a very easy form of escapism from the current reality.

The development of European integration can be divided into two phases. The first era ended with the Maastricht Treaty. It was a liberalization phase, with the main goal of European integration at the time being the removal of various barriers and borders in Europe. The second phase is a homogenization or standardization phase, one that involves regulation from the top and growing control over our lives. This no longer has anything to do with freedom and democracy.

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.

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.

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

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

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

To reduce the interpretation of the causality of all kinds of climate changes and of global warming to one variable, CO2, or to a small proportion of one variable - human-induced CO2 - is impossible to accept. Elementary rationality and my decades-long experience with econometric modelling and statistical testing of scientific hypotheses tell me that it is impossible to make strong conclusions based on mere correlation of two (or more) time series.

Climate alarmists believe in their own omnipotency, in knowing better than millions of rationally behaving men and women what is right or wrong, in the possibility to give adequate instructions to hundreds of millions of individuals and institutions and the resulting compliance or non-compliance of those who are supposed to follow these instructions.

This is crossing the Rubicon, after which there will be no more sovereign states in Europe with fully-fledged governments and parliaments which represent legitimate interests of their citizens, but only one State will remain. Basic things will be decided by a remote 'federal government' in Brussels and, for example, Czech citizens will be only a tiny particle whose voice and influence will be almost zero. ... We are against a European superstate.

As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants. Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism.

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.

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.

I'm convinced that after years of studying the phenomenon, global warming is not the real issue of temperature. That is the issue of a new ideology or a new religion. A religion of climate change or a religion of global warming. This is a religion which tells us that the people are responsible for the current, very small increase in temperatures. And they should be punished.

But how can you speed up the transformation of society in a country as large as Russia? Those sounding the moral outcry are the ones who are trying to dictate their standards from the outside. Of course, that isn't the right way to go either. One cannot impose democracy from the other side of national borders, which is something we ourselves experienced during the communist era. The West's policies toward Eastern Europe, the Helsinki process - none of that really helped us.