All Quotes by Silvio Berlusconi
“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.”
“Let's talk about football and women. … Gerhard, why don't you start?”
“Foreign press is usually leftist and describes us differently from what we really are.”
“If the left wing was to rule, the result would be misery, terror and death, like it happens in every place where communism rules.”
“The left has always been on the wrong side. They were against Hitler, but not against Stalin.”
“I used all my playboy skills and courted the Finnish President.”
“We must fight against tax evasion but also defend the rights of tax evaders, or companies that make mistakes”
“I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I am a patient victim, I sacrifice myself for everyone.”
“By definition, as a Prime Minister I cannot be a liar.”
“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].”
“Only Napoleon did more than I have done. But I am definitely taller.”
“Churchill liberated us from the Nazis, Silvio Berlusconi is liberating us from communists.”
“Do it my way and earn more money.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The journalist Enzo Biagi left the RAI out of free will … he did it for the money.”
“The public prosecutor … should be subject to regular examinations to attest to sanity.”
“Marcello Dell'Utri is right: Mangano was a hero, because he never invented anything about me.”
“They're not gaffes. I've made no gaffes.”
“The women of the Right are certainly the most beautiful … the Left has no taste, not even when it comes to women”
“People will vote for Daniela Santanchè because she is a beautiful babe.”
“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”
“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.”
“They keep calling me a dwarf, but I'm taller than Sarkozy and Putin.”
“Barack Obama being young, handsome and sun-tanned is going to get along with you swimmingly.”
“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.”
“In absolute terms, I am the most legally persecuted man of all times, in the whole history of mankind, worldwide.”
“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.”
“I wish luck to you and your nation that loves you as the election results we can see testify.”
“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 to the contrary of truth.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Only the prosecutors' witnesses were admitted, those of the defence were chucked out … Can there be worse justice than this? I am treated like a criminal.”
“On Edge of abyss.”
“Obviously the government of [Mussolini's] time, out of fear that German power might lead to complete victory, preferred to ally itself with Hitler's Germany rather than opposing it … The racial laws were the worst fault of Mussolini as a leader, who in so many other ways did well.”
“The link between my experience as an entrepreneur and that of a politician is all in one word: freedom.”
“I'm not a traditional politician, and I have a sense of humor. I'll try to soften it and become boring, maybe even very boring, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to.”
“I have little hair because my brain is so big it pushes the hair out.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I am absolutely sure to be the most democratic man to ever become Prime Minister in Italy.”
“I always win, I'm cursed to win.”
“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.”
“I'm a man of honour, a truthful person, a gentleman of absolute morality.”
“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.”
“Mussolini never killed anyone, he just sent dissenters abroad for vacation.”