Silvio Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi (born September 29, 1936, in Milan) is an Italian businessman who served three terms as the country's Prime Minister between 1994 and 2011.

Sourced

2001

• On hair loss: I have little hair because my brain is so big it pushes the hair out

• In the wake of 11 September:

We must be aware of the superiority of our civilization, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights and - in contrast with Islamic countries - respect for religious and political rights, a system that has as its value understanding of diversity and tolerance ... The West will continue to conquer peoples, even if it means a confrontation with another civilization, Islam, firmly entrenched where it was 1,400 years ago.

• His response to worldwide condemnation of the above speech on 9/11:

They have tried to hang me on an isolated word, taken out of context from my whole speech ... I did not say anything against the Islamic civilization... It's the work of some people in the Italian leftist press who wanted to tarnish my image and destroy my long-standing relations with Arabs and Muslims.

2002

• I am absolutely sure to be the most democratic man to ever become Prime Minister in Italy. (ASCA, January 25, 2002)

2003

• I always win, I'm cursed to win. (ANSA, May 24, 2003)

• I know in Italy there is a producer, producing a film on Nazi concentration camps. I will suggest you for the role of kapo. You would be perfect for that role (said to German MEP Martin Schulz, European Parliament, July 2, 2003)

• I'm a man of honour, a truthful person, a gentleman of absolute morality. (From "La Repubblica", July 13, 2003)

• About magistrates he said: "To do that kind of job you must be mentally disturbed. If they do that kind of job is because they are anthropologically different from the other human beings" (ANSA, September 5, 2003)

• Mussolini never killed anyone, he just sent dissenters abroad for vacation. (From La voce di Rimini, September 11, 2003)

• At the Brussels summit, at the end of Italy's EU presidency, in December 2003: "Let's talk about football and women." (Turning to four-times-married German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder.) "Gerhard, why don't you start?"

2004

• Foreign press is usually leftist and describes us differently from what we really are.
  • Speech to the association Azzurri nel mondo, Lugano, October 24, 2004)

• There is a natural right that says that when the state asks you for a third of what you earned through back-breaking work, this seems to you a reasonable demand and you give in. If the state asks you for more, or much more, then it is a clear abuse against you and then you try to find evasive ways to make you feel coherent to your intimate sense of morality and it doesn't make you feel ethically guilty.
  • November 11, 2004; Speaking in front of the commander of the special italian police corp, Guardia di Finanza, whose job is to fight financial frauds and tax evasion

2005

• If the left wing was to rule, the result would be misery, terror and death, like it happens in every place where communism rules. (from Corriere della Sera, January 17, 2005)

• The left has always been on the wrong side. They were against Hitler, but not against Stalin. (newspaper La Repubblica, February 3, 2005)

• I used all my playboy skills and courted the Finnish President. (at the opening of the European Food Authority in Parma, June 21, 2005, asked to explain how Italy managed to get the support of its biggest competitor over the EU Food Authority dispute)

2006

• We must fight against tax evasion but also defend the rights of tax evaders, or companies that make mistakes

• By definition, as a Prime Minister I cannot be a liar. (Italian Radio National Broadcast, January 18 2006)

• Speaking at his party's convention in Sardinia on January 28, 2006, "Thank you dear Father Massimiliano, I'll try not to let you down and I promise you two and a half months of complete sexual abstinence until April 9 [election]". (Daily Il Giornale, January 29, 2006)

• Only Napoleon did more than I have done. But I am definitely taller. (Reuters, February 9, 2006)

• Churchill liberated us from the Nazis, Silvio Berlusconi is liberating us from communists. (Speech in Ancona, February 11, 2006)

• Berlusconi's advice to Italians trying to escape poverty: "Do it my way and earn more money". (an interview with Italian Telelombardia, March 6, 2006)

• The April 9th/10th vote is like that one of 1948, when democratic forces rejected the communist offensive and firmly moved the Country to the West, towards democracy and its values. ("Affari Italiani" magazine, April 7, 2006).

• On his playboy image: I'll try not to let you down and I promise you two and a half months of complete sexual abstinence until election day

Electoral campaign

• On himself at the launch of the 2006 campaign: I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I am a patient victim, I sacrifice myself for everyone (2006)

• I have Italian citizens in too good consideration to think that there are so many voting assholes (literally: "coglioni", rude word for testicles) around which could vote against their own interests. I apologize for the rude but effective language (Confcommercio meeting in Rome, April 4, 2006)

• Go and read the black book on communism and you'll find that under Mao's China they didn't eat babies but they boiled them to fertilise the fields. (Naples Rally, March 28, 2006)

2008

• On previous comments They're not gaffes. I've made no gaffes.

• On women: The women of the Right are certainly the most beautiful ... the Left has no taste, not even when it comes to women

• On women: People will vote for Daniela Santanchè because she is a beautiful babe

• On women: Ladies, I have a mission for you on election day: cook! Sweet and exquisite things, please. Bring them to the polling station to be examined. The boldest can try making a tart, the most skilful, profiteroles

• On ageing: It's the fate of the lion in winter: all his billions, all his television channels cannot rescue him from the mockery that rains down on the aged lecher, his powers visibly waning.

• On size: They keep calling me a dwarf, but I'm taller than Sarkozy and Putin

• On the US president-elect to Dmitry Medvedev: "Barack Obama being young, handsome and sun-tanned is going to get along with you swimmingly"

Literally in Italian: "Ho detto a Medvedev che Obama ha tutto per andare d'accordo con lui: è giovane, bello e anche abbronzato"

Electoral campaign

• The journalist Enzo Biagi left the RAI out of free will and that he did it for the money.
  • Enzo Biagi was one of the journalists that had to leave the RAI in 2002 after the so-called Diktat Bulgaro, in which he was accused by Berlusconi to make a criminal use of television.

• Vittorio Mangano is a hero because he never confessed under pressure compromising things about Berlusconi or Dell’Utri
  • Berlusconi confirms the message of Senator Marcello Dell'Utri about the live sentenced mafia-member Vittorio Mangano.

2009

• On women: "We could not field a big enough force to avoid this risk [of rape]. We would need so many soldiers because our women are so beautiful"
• On prosecutions against him: "In absolute terms, I am the most legally persecuted man of all times, in the whole history of mankind, worldwide"
• On himself: The real Italian anomaly is not Silvio Berlusconi but communist prosecutors and communist judges in Milan who have attacked him again and again since he entered politics.
• On Alexander Lukashenko: I wish luck to you and your nation that loves you as the election results we can see testify (as quoted in Results of the official visit of Silvio Berlusconi to Belarus, 1 Dec. 2009, from belarus.by, the official website of the Republic of Belarus

2010

• Ghe Pensi Mi
  • Milanese for: "I'll handle it"

2011

• On L'infedele (TV program), calling during the show: They called me, inviting me to watch L'infedele. I'm watching a disgusting program, run in a despicable, vile and repulsive way. I've heard false and distorted views, far away from the truth. I've seen a representation of reality which is on the contrary of truth.
• On Hosni Mubarak, in the juncture of the 2011 Egyptian protests: I hope that in Egypt there can be a transition toward a more democratic system without a break from President Mubarak, who in the West, above all in the United States, is considered the wisest of men and a precise reference point.
• On the 2011 Libyan protests: We are worried about everything happening there, in all the area. I haven't yet heard from Gaddafi. The situation is evolving and so I don't feel I should disturb anyone.
• On public school: Freedom means having the right to freely educate your children, and freely means no obligation to send them in a public school, where teachers want to inculcate principles different from the principles that their parents want to inculcate them in a familiar context.
• On Italy: I'm getting out to mind my own fucking business, from somewhere else, and so I'm leaving this shitty country, of which I'm sickened.
• Denying the heaviness of the Italian crisis, during the news conference after the end of the G20 summit held in Cannes, 3-4 November 2011: The life in Italy is the life of a wealthy country, consumptions haven't diminished, it's hard to find seats on planes, our restaurants are full of people.

External links

• BBC, Berlusconi in his own words.
• The Observer, Did I say that?