Vaclav Klaus Quotes

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.

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

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

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.

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

Environmentalism is a dangerous ideology endangering human freedom.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.