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

Vaclav Klaus

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Vaclav Klaus
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: June 19
Economist
Pedagogue
Politician
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Praha
Vaclav Klaus
Regime
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More quotes by Vaclav Klaus

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