Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Vaclav Klaus
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: June 19
Economist
Pedagogue
Politician
Statesman
Teacher
Praha
Vaclav Klaus
Democracy
Ambitious
Economy
Socialism
Politics
Ideology
Freedom
Prosperity
Threat
Unscrupulous
Market
Environmentalism
Instead
Largest
Longer
Arrogant

More quotes by Vaclav Klaus

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