Vaclav Klaus Quotes

• 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.

  Vaclav Klaus

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Rules, Bidder, Low

• 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.

  Vaclav Klaus

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Cultural, Agreed, Literary

• By the time I returned to Czechoslovakia, I had an understanding of the principles of the market.

  Vaclav Klaus

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Time, Market

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

  Vaclav Klaus

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Events, Square, Impression

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

  Vaclav Klaus

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Politician, Intended

• 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.

  Vaclav Klaus

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Teach, Planning

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

  Vaclav Klaus

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Regime, Texts

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Dissidents, Invasion, August, Spring

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Global Warming, Threat, Weapon

• 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.

  Vaclav Klaus

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Pursue, Aiming, Good, Foolish

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

  Vaclav Klaus

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Outcome, Establish

• 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.

  Vaclav Klaus

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Pass, Citizen, Worker

• 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.

  Vaclav Klaus

  Tags in Measures

• 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

  Tags in Forum, Issued, Civic

• 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.

  Vaclav Klaus

  Tags in Monopolies, Subsidies, Compete, Restrictive

• 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.

  Vaclav Klaus

  Tags in Firms, Footing, Privatization, Compete, Ownership

• 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

  Tags in Pursuing, Arrested, Engaging, Dissidents

Vaclav Klaus (17)

Birth:	19th June, 1941
Nationality:	Czech
Profession:	Politician

About

Václav Klaus is the second President of the Czech Republic. He was Prime Minister of the Czech Republic from 1992 to 1997.

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