67 Quotes by Vaclav Klaus

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.