Peter Šťastný

"I was wonderfully motivated by patriotism and "being Slovak", I always wanted to be someone - later as Stano Mikita, Eugen Czernan, Martin Kukučín, people, important Slovaks who went into the world and asserted themselves - to be an example for young and other Slovaks to make them understand and show then that the Slovaks are the same as anyone else. Slovaks can also compete in the toughest competition anywhere in the world, it's up to us. But of course, when we were a second-rate nation, second-class citizens, there were fewer opportunities. In order to have opportunities, one must prepare an environment, and one must fight for that environment. No one will give it to you, no one will just give it to you. I am very glad that these things have happened, I take it as a huge fulfilment of historical dreams, desires and, above all, prayers. I still pray and thank the Saint Mary of Seven Sorrows, because she is the patroness, whose generations before us consecrated Slovakia. The world is moving forward, and so is Slovakia - no matter how imperfect the little things look, but what Slovakia has achieved compared to what was here two hundred years, a hundred years ago - is amazing progress, it is visible, tangible. "

"In the 1950s, people were lost, people ended up in 20-30 year old dungeons, labour camps in Jáchymov and anywhere for nothing. They invented the enemies of the state or bourgeois nationalists, or something very general ... Our family was not affected, but we were fully aware of it because everyone knew someone, it was then part of the oxygen in the air. People were terribly afraid of it. It was open in families, but there were families where they didn't even trust each other because being a spy was modern. It was modern to be a spy, to report on neighbours, co-workers, or acquaintances. The atmosphere was deliberately made to be full of mistrust and fear. The only thing that was everywhere were those primitive banners "with the Soviet Union forever and never otherwise". Today, given the past, one would say that eternity is about 40 years. Somewhat short eternity. "