I grew up in Hungary, lived through fascism and the Holocaust, and then had a foretaste of communism. I learned at an early age how important it is what kind of government prevails. I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society. When I had made more money than I needed for myself and my family, I set up a foundation to promote the values and principles of a free and open society.

Like every people on earth, my compatriots want to live in a democratic country, without fear for their future and the life and destiny of coming generations.

The creation of our independent State was the outcome of the indestructible moral strength of the Croatian people, based on a firm national awareness that has burned for centuries as an eternal fire in our hearts. A nation may have existed from time immemorial, but if it lacks the moral strength and an awareness of its unique individual being, of its nationhood and statehood, it will disappear from the stage of world history. The Croatian people yearned for their State and rallied to achieve it.

The peoples of Yugoslavia do not want Fascism. They do not want a totalitarian regime, they do not want to become slaves of the German and Italian financial oligarchy as they never wanted to become reconciled to the semi-colonial dependence imposed on them by the so-called Western democracies after the first imperialist war.

These young people accomplish little toward the solution of this social problem, and bear the brunt of being cultivated into unnourished, oversensitive lives. They have been shut off from the common labor by which they live which is a great source of moral and physical health. They feel a fatal want of harmony between their theory and their lives, a lack of coördination between thought and action. I think it is hard for us to realize how seriously many of them are taking to the notion of human brotherhood, how eagerly they long to give tangible expression to the democratic ideal. These young men and women, longing to socialize their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.

I became interested in international politics from my experience living as an exchange student in Europe, both in high school and in college, and I wanted to contribute to a restoration of wise and effective American leadership in the world.

I came out of the Soviet Union no longer a communist, because I believed in personal freedom. Like all Americans, I took for granted the individual liberty to which I had been born. It seemed as necessary and as inevitable as the air I breathed; it seemed the natural element in which human beings lived.

Croatia had a long, difficult, complicated path. We are different and we are special, although every parent likes to think and tell their children that they are special and that they are different, while most are in fact ordinary like almost all of us. We are a different and special country. We are the only country that had to go through a war after 1990 (…) and had to fight for what to others had come easy. That’s why we are different and that difference is also reflected in the fact that we are sometimes misunderstood and hurt, but we don’t care. We, you especially, know that our path was right, just, and that we were guided by the fight for our state, for our historical right, which all peoples have.

I always wondered what democracy might smell like.

In youth one believes in democracy, later on, one has to accept it.

The meaning of what is happening, from my point of view, is as follows: patterns and algorithms for overthrowing any legal authority in any country inconvenient for West, have long been created. Of course, all this is done under the banner of promoting democracy. Well, in which country where they 'came with democracy' did this democracy take root: in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya? Or in the former Yugoslavia, which they forcibly divided into 6 countries with their 'democratic' bombing in 1999. And you can simply forget about sovereignty and independence after any American intervention.

Having come from a totalitarian country, the Soviet Union, and having seen the hardships that my family endured–both while there and trying to leave—I certainly am particularly sensitive to the stifling of individual liberties.

This is not to underestimate the historical obstacles to the development of democratic institutions and a democratic culture. Such problems nearly destroyed our country – and that should encourage a spirit of humility and a patience with others. Freedom is not merely a political menu option, or a foreign policy fad; it should be the defining commitment of our country, and the hope of the world. That appeal is proved not just by the content of people's hopes, but a noteworthy hypocrisy: No democracy pretends to be a tyranny. Most tyrannies pretend they are democracies. Democracy remains the definition of political legitimacy. That has not changed, and that will not change.

I learnt a lot about democracy in the schoolyards of Brooklyn, New York.