"From the very start, the problem I had in the communistic Czechoslovakia was that my parents encouraged us to be honest and truthful. We wouldn’t be deterred, even when they fired my father from the police force and he could only work as an unqualified labourer after

"I was born in the spring of 1936 in Ashiya, Japan as the only son of a Czechoslovak diplomat, Jan Fierlinger. As the war was drawing near, my father was ordered to return to Czechoslovakia."

“I was born on August 20, 1886, when my older brother Josef was already 4. Over 20 years, our Mother gave birth to 9 children

"My father founded the automobile factory Aero and later also took an interest in aviation. I decided to follow in his footsteps

"About a week before the end of the war, in May 1945, I became a partisan. We ambushed a Sokol gymnasium in Nový Bydžov, where the Germans kept their weapons

"The communist regime seemed to be at the height of its power when I graduated from the Charles University’s Faculty of Medicine in 1961. The path to my graduation was by no means a straight line."

"Even though I’m Czech, in 1922, when I was born – just a year after my sister Vlasta – our family was living in Warsaw

"I was born near the small village of Mlynske Struhadlo in southern Bohemia on April 13, 1937, as the youngest of 3 sons in a family of millers. Flosman´s Mill had been in the family for generations and it was the life blood of the surrounding villages

"After I completed military training, I got a job at the Ministry of Finance; they sent me to Cheb, since I knew the German language