Here is his reaction to the election of Obama, that he told not only to Russia's Medvedev, but also to the world:
Berlusconi wrote:
"I think that there is going to be good cooperation" between Obama and Medvedev, said Berlusconi. "He has everything needed to reach deals with him: he's young, handsome and even tanned."
He says it was meant to be a joke, and since most of what he says is laughable I suppose he has a point.
For your amusement, here are some more quotes from Silvio, all genuine:
Quote:
Read The Black Book of Communism and you will discover that in the China of Mao, they did not eat children, but had them boiled to fertilise the fields.
Berlusconi, about left-wing voters, on the eve on 2006 elections wrote:
"I trust the intelligence of the Italian people too much to think that there are so many pricks around who would vote against their own best interests."
Quote:
I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I am a patient victim, I put up with everyone, I sacrifice myself for everyone
Berlusconi, Promising to put family values at the centre of his campaign wrote:
I will try to meet your expectations, and I promise from now on, two-and-a-half months of absolute sexual abstinence, until [election day on] 9 April
To German MEP Martin Schulz, at start of Italy's EU presidency in July 2003 wrote:
I know that in Italy there is a man producing a film on **** concentration camps - I shall put you forward for the role of Kapo (guard chosen from among the prisoners) - you would be perfect."
At the Brussels summit, at the end of Italy's EU presidency, in December 2003 wrote:
Let's talk about football and women." (Turning to four-times-married German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder.) "Gerhard, why don't you start?"
On Italian secretaries (comments made at the New York stock exchange) wrote:
Italy is now a great country to invest in... today we have fewer communists and those who are still there deny having been one. Another reason to invest in Italy is that we have beautiful secretaries... superb girls.
On Mussolini wrote:
Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini used to send people on vacation in internal exile.
After 9/11 wrote:
We must be aware of the superiority of our civilisation, 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 civilisation, Islam, firmly entrenched where it was 1,400 years ago."
"The West will continue to conquer peoples, even if it means a confrontation with another civilisation, Islam, firmly entrenched where it was 1,400 years ago."
On judges pursuing him on charges of corruption and fraud wrote:
"Those judges are doubly mad! In the first place, because they are politically mad, and in the second place because they are mad anyway.
"If they do that job it is because they are anthropologically different from the rest of the human race."
"If they do that job it is because they are anthropologically different from the rest of the human race."
On AIDS wrote:
"An Aids patient asks his doctor whether the sand treatment prescribed him will do any good. 'No', the doctor replies, 'but you will get accustomed to living under the earth'."
On critics who said the AIDS joke was offensive wrote:
They have lost their minds; they really have come to the end of the line, indeed they have gone beyond it. I would advise them, too, to undergo sand treatment..."
So yeah, we'll miss Bushisms, but we've still got Berlusconisms, and they're almost as good
