Vaclav Klaus Quotes

The reason socialism has failed around the world every time it's been tried is because people in socialist countries have looked at the United States and have said if they can have it that good, we can. It's a failed, flawed ideology, but if you ask socialists why it's always failed, it's because the United States has stood in the way.

Capitalism is at least tolerable, which cannot be said of Socialism or Communism.

I even believed in a third way; I thought it was possible to put a human face on capitalism. But I was wrong. The only way to save the world is through socialism, but a socialism that exists within a democracy; there's no dictatorship here.

Socialism doesn't work. A big government doesn't work.

The essential notion of a capitalist society ... is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force.

Socialism requires that government becomes your god.

I think that the future belongs to democracy, but not to capitalism, because they are opposite camps.

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

In hindsight it may even seem inevitable that a socialist society will starve when it runs out of capitalists.

Socialism's not a word that I use. I say 'social democracy' because I don't think the government needs to own all the means of production.

I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism.

But we don't have an example of a democratic society existing in a socialist economy - which is the only real alternative to capitalism in the modern world.

Socialism? We've had way too much of it already.

In socialism, private property is anathema, and equal distribution of income the first consideration. In capitalism, private property is cardinal, and distribution left to ensue from the play of free contract and selfish interest on that basis, no matter what anomalies it may present.

You've got Washington picking winners and losers. And so, all of a sudden, decisions are being made on what helps politicians, not what helps the economy. Some will call it socialism. Some will call it a command and control economy. Whatever it is, it's antithetical to the American experience.

In practice, socialism didn't work. But socialism could never have worked because it is based on false premises about human psychology and society, and gross ignorance of human economy.

It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.

There are words bandied about that are being misused - words like 'socialism,' words like 'communism,' words like 'fascism.'

I am convinced that the path to a new, better and possible world is not capitalism, the path is socialism.

I believe that all forms of socialism have been proven over time to result in a loss of both economic and civil liberties, with increasing poverty.

We who are members of the Communist Party repudiate the exclusive identification of democracy with capitalism. We declare that democracy can be widened, take on new aspects, become truly a rule of the people, only when it is extended to the economic life of the people.

Socialism can also practice market economy.

The Clarion will convert England to Socialism in seven years. British working classes are not fit for Socialism yet.

The capitalist process shapes things and souls for socialism.

I certainly am socialistic, but I am not a socialist