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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

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Vaclav Klaus
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: June 19
Economist
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Vaclav Klaus
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More quotes by Vaclav Klaus

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By the time I returned to Czechoslovakia, I had an understanding of the principles of the market.
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What is concisely referred to as global warming, is a fatal mistake of the present time.
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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.
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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.
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Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism.
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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.
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not a scientific body capable of accurately assessing the facts about global warming.
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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.
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I never intended to be a politician or office-seeker.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.
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Environmentalism is a dangerous ideology endangering human freedom.
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You cannot have democratic accountability in anything bigger than a nation state.
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EU didn't advance our [Eastern Europe] democracy by a single millimeter.
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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.
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