Fraudsters

"I don't care a straw for your newspaper articles; my constituents don't know how to read, but they can't help seeing them damned pictures."

"I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating."

"Three casual expressions attributed to Mr. Tweed, illustrated by his brief political history, indicate his theory of administration. The first was, "The way to have power is to take it;" the second, "He is human;" and the third, "What are you going to do about it?" In his career was exhibited the despotic phase of municipal administration. He got for himself and his associates offices, one after the other, by taking them with or without right, until he held the power of the State, and then fortified his position by enacting appropriate laws. His means of doing this was to approach men through their self-interests, and to buy their support by promises, offices, and money. His appreciation of this trait in the character of the men about him was expressed in his belief that they were "human." The arrogance of the full possession of power and the defiance against the remonstrances of honest men drove him to the extreme of audacity, "What are you going to do about it?" which preceded his fall. There was no greater popular mistake than to call Mr. Tweed and his associates a "ring." They were so at the outset by the "cohesive power of public plunder," but, once in possession, like a crew of pirates who had gained the deck of a prize, they became arrayed against each other. If they had been a ring, their compactness of purpose might have constituted a government, but they had so little hold upon or confidence in each other that they dissolved at the first shock."

"If my forgeries looked as bad as the CBS documents, it would have been Catch Me In Two Days."

"What I did in my youth is hundreds of times easier today. Technology breeds crime."

"Remember what being an adult is: It has nothing to do with money or awards."

"I made a lot of exits through side doors, down fire escapes or over rooftops. I abandoned more wardrobes in the course of five years than most men acquire in a lifetime. I was slipperier than a buttered escargot."

"If I had to place any blame for my future nefarious actions, I'd put it on the Ford. That Ford fractured every moral fiber in my body. It introduced me to girls, and I didn't come to my senses for six years. They were wonderful years."

"I stole every nickel, dime and dollar and blew it on fine threads, luxurious lodgings, fantastic foxes and other sensual goodies. I partied in every capital in Europe and bask on all the worlds most famous beaches."

"Frank Abagnale could write a check on toilet paper, drawn on the Confederate States Treasury, sign it 'U.R. Hooked' and cash it at any bank in town, using a Hong Kong driver's license for identification."

"His chutzpah and his imagination in the scams and stings he pulled off were so imaginative and so courageous. Amazing. I loved the fact that he could pull off all of those professions. In a way, he's sort of the anti-hero that you root for, even though you know he's going to have to pay a price and go to jail"

"He understood whatever those hidden mechanisms are that convince people to trust you. I kind of watched him and absorbed what I could from him."

"I did not make this film about Frank Abagnale because of what he did . . but because of what he has done with his life the past 30 years."

"Think of how many women there are out there who would like to go to bed with me, but don't know it. Life is a problem of communication"

"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."

"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."

"Ghe pensi mi."

"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."

"Being a piduist is not a title of demerit."

"P2 gathered the best men in the country, and signing up was not a mistake but an accident through no fault of our own."

"When I received my membership card it said I was an apprentice bricklayer and I, who was a great home builder at the time, couldn't help but have a good laugh."

"We don't want to see just one forward up front. To win you have to score. To have chances you've got to have forwards close to the goal, I appreciated Leonardo a lot but I disagreed with him in how he fielded the team. Ronaldinho must play on the shoulder of the strikers even if he has a tendency to drift left. Ronaldinho has been linked in the media with a move away but Berlusconi was adamant the playmaker was staying. He is the No1 attraction at Milan," he said, "Ronaldinho does not want to leave. I'm sure he is happy to stay. I would be happy for Gattuso to stay but we are not against people saying they want to leave, We can't exclude [the sale of Huntelaar] even if we are convinced of his qualities as a main striker."

"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."

"[To the] edge of the 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."

"[On the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine] Putin was pushed by the Russian population, by his party and by his ministers to invent this special operation."

"The troops were supposed to enter, reach Kyiv in a week, replace the Zelensky government with decent people and a week later come back."

"The aggression against Ukraine is unjustifiable and unacceptable, [Forza Italia's] position is clear. We will always be with the EU and Nato."

"Massacres of civilians in Bucha and other localities are real war crimes."

"I added extra stimulation ... if you win against one of these great teams, I’ll send a bus full of whores to the locker room."

"(Italian language) [...] io, a parlare con Zelensky, se fossi stato il Presidente del Consiglio non ci sarei mai andato. Perché, come sapete, stiamo assistendo alla devastazione del suo paese e alla strage di suoi soldati e di suoi civili. Bastava che lui cessasse di attaccare le due repubbliche autonome del Donbass e questo non sarebbe avvenuto; quindi io giudico molto molto, molto negativamente il comportamento di questo signore."

"One of the wildest elections in Italian history is finally over. And as expected, it came down to one guy, the guy who inspired a group of topless female protesters to storm his polling station. That looks so inappropriate. Shouting, "Enough, Berlusconi, enough!" That's right. Bunga, bunga is back. Yesterday and today, all of the headlines had been about Silvio Berlusconi's amazing return to power. There's just one problem. He lost. When all the votes were counted, Silvio finished with 31 percent, a strong showing but only good enough for second place behind a guy called Pier Luigi Bersani. But still every headline is about sweet Silvio, because sometimes you don't have to be first to be famous. Even people who hate him, and there are a lot of them, want to read and hear about him. … Silvio, Danica and Tiger, what a threesome. They're not famous for nothing. They are hugely successful at a level that most of us can only dream of. But what really matters is that they have that something, that ineffable and intangible something simply known as star power. People care about them. That's even when they lose, they're the ones we want to hear about. And maybe that's a great gift or maybe it leads to an intense stressful life since every loss and every failures in the headlines you can't have any secrets. Only perfection is enough."

"Licio Gelli: In this country there is only one charismatic figure who can truly lead it: Silvio Berlusconi."

"Gomez: But in the meantime we know how these things go: he will end up being acquitted."

"To me Silvio Berlusconi incarnates all the qualities a stateman should have. When I studied politics, I was taught that the ideal politician is a man who having had success in his own profession and not having economic worries for himself and his family, decides to devote part of his life to the service of his people at the local or national level, which is tantamount to saying that the ideal politician ought to be:"

"Well, damn it all, it's only sixpence, I know, but I suppose he has to begin somewhere."

"I have not had your advantages, gentlemen. What poor education I have received has been gained in the University of Life."

"No, reaping."

"Bottomley...was a genial rascal and took the line that people who were fools enough to be duped by his swindles deserved all they got."

"Since war is a vulgar business it was right that the leading unofficial recruiter should have been the greatest vulgarian of the day. Horatio Bottomley, editor of John Bull, was sufficiently moved by the spirit of 1914 to inform his friends that he was making a complete break with his 'sordid past'. His ambition was to be Director of Recruiting, preferably with a seat in the Cabinet, but he was tactfully assured by Asquith that he would be more use to the country in an unofficial capacity. The public who cheered the patriotic speeches of the People's Tribune were unaware of the high fees he received for delivering them (between £50 and £100 a meeting, sometimes more)."

"Give me a black goddess sister, I can't resist her! No stringy haired, blonde haired, blue eyed, pale skinned, buttermilk complexion, grafted recessive, depressive, ironing board backside, straight-up and straight down, no frills, no thrills, Miss 6 o'clock, subject to have the itch, mutanoid, caucasoid, white cave bitch!"

"Now it is time to stand up and fight back.… There are no good crackers, and if you find one, kill him before he changes."

"I say you call yourself Goldstein, Silverstein, and Rubinstein because you're stealing all the gold and silver and rubies all over the earth — and it's true, because of your thieving and stealing and roguing, and lying all over the face of the planet earth."

"Tell us you lost 6 million. Historians, scholars, scientists, they went to some of the death camps. It wasn't 6 million, it wasn't 5 million, it wasn't 4 million, it wasn't even 3 million. Some of them say we'd be hard-pressed to get 1 1/2 million. Reports on the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis were bloated, exaggerated, probably fabricated."

"Look these bastards in the eyes, and if anyone attacks you, already decide who will be the one to disconnect the railing where you are, and beat the hell out of them, the no-good bastards! And if you don't have a gun, every one of them has one gun, two guns, maybe three guns. In self-defense, if they attack you, take their goddamn guns from them and use their guns on them! In self-defense. Giuliani is known for taking his police and sending them off in riots. If any one of these bastards riots here today, you take their nightstick the way they did brother Abner Louima and ram it up their behind and jam it down their damn throats!"

"The white race is absolutely disagreeable to get along with in peace. No other people on the face of the earth have been able to get along with white people since white people have been on our planet."

"When white folks can't defeat you they'll always find some Negro—some boot-licking, butt-licking, buck-dancing, bamboozled, half-baked, half-fried, sissified, punkified, pasteurized, homogenized nigger—that they can trot out in front of you."

"Who are the slumlords in the Black community? The so-called Jews... Who is it sucking our blood in the Black community? A white imposter Arab and a white imposter Jew."

"We don't owe the white man nothing in South Africa. He's killed millions of our women, our children, our babies, our elders.… If he won't get out of town by sundown, we kill everything white that ain't right that's in sight in South Africa. We kill the women, we kill the children, we kill the babies. We kill the blind, we kill the crippled, we kill them all … and kill them a-god-damn-gain because they didn't die hard enough."

"Some people have said Brother Khalid was a villain, but we know he was a victim in a world that is evil. Racism and injustice are the real villains here."

"I found the speech, after listening to it in context, vile in manner, repugnant, malicious, mean-spirited and spoken in mockery of individuals and people, which is against the spirit of Islam. While I stand by the truths that he spoke, I must condemn in the strongest terms the manner in which those truths were represented."

"He has in his life and his death brought us together. That is one of his greatest legacies: that he has brought us together from all segments of the African world.… He was a constant soldier, a warrior … He wanted power for black people. That's why he reaffirmed what we taught in the sixties: Black power! … He believed we have a right to self-determination — as our organization US said — self-determination, self-respect and self-defense."

"Muhammad was the flip side to Bull Connor. The alter ego of a grand dragon. He was the mirror's image of generations of white bigots who irrationally painted all African Americans with a single broad, racist stroke. And as with the passing of all of his white counterparts, I offer Khalid Abdul Muhammad a simple eulogy: Good riddance."

"Easing the passing of a dying person isn't all that wicked. She wanted to die. That can't be murder. It is impossible to accuse a doctor."

"That was very wrong... I have had God's forgiveness for it."

"I don't want money. What use is it?"

"I don't know what you mean. I don't keep a record."

"Murder... murder... Can you prove it was murder? [...] I didn't think you could prove it was murder. She was dying in any event."

"I will see you in heaven."

"She might be violent."

"Mrs Thomas has promised me her typewriter, I'll take it now."

"The person who told you that doesn't know why I did it."

"An anonymous poem "Adams and Eves" circulated at the time of Adams' arrest finished:"

"A mercenary mercy killer who was prepared to sell death."

"You do realise, doctor, that you have killed her?"

"Rajneesh is a great leader and a good man who was never really understood in his own country. In India he was a philosophy professor whose real name was Mohan Chandra. Rajneesh was a nickname he acquired in his childhood. He began lecturing in 1957 at colleges and universities. In 1971, he changed his name to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh."

"You tell your Governor, your attorney general and all the bigoted pigs outside that if one person on Rancho Rajneesh is harmed I will have 15 of their heads, and I mean it. You have given me no choice. Even though I am a non violent person I will do that."

"By the year 2000, Oregon will be collapsed and the city of Rajneesh Puram will be existing."

"In order for the Moral Majority and the mobs to understand Rajneesh, they will have to leave their mob mentality and their morality and become amoral. Right now they are living in the 16th century; it is about time that they grow up and move with the science. And become sophisticated as Rajneesh are."

"Tough titties."

"Charismatic communications from Bhagwan or his designated surrogate, Sheela, were grandiose and served as motivation, direction, and inspiration for the group. Bhagwan's and Sheela's rhetorics posed problems for the movement in their very expansiveness and arrogance toward other groups and institutions. While the attacks on other cultures attracted followers dissatisfied with governments and institutions, they also alarmed and alienated more conventional audiences."

"Once the Rajneeshees moved beyond Rancho Rajneesh and began to publicly challenge the status quo's discursive formation, their radical vision direcly threatened the existing order. Ma Anand Sheela's polarizing rhetoric took the values and definitions of the establishment and subverted them, gaining a public voice for the Rajneesh cause."

"All evidence suggested that Sheela and her small circle were responsible for these dangerous activities, but whether or not Rajneesh knew remains in dispute. However, for the past twenty years, Sheela has sworn that Rajneesh directed every criminal and violent move."

"Rajneesh had taken a vow of public silence before his arrival in America. He now spoke to his followers only through his inner circle, chiefly Ma Anand Sheela, who met with him every day."

"In a TG4 documentary his mother said, "He broke so many windows, we eventually started boarding them up"."

"Everyone tells me not to say the things I do. I'm very direct, very undiplomatic. Everyone tells me to stop talking about my hacker history, about my lifesytle, but I don't give a ****, I've just stayed the way I am. Over the past few years I realised that if I was to run a company or a fund, I needed to be the captain and not listen to anyone else. I needed to be the ruler of my world otherwise it was never going to work."

"[On his early history as a hacker] Every hack was a trophy. I had a big feeling of power because I was running the most important worldwide mailbox exchanging hacking information and I knew what was really going on."

"They're treating us like a Mafia, man! [...] It's unbelievable. It's only because they cannot extradite us to the US just for copyright violation. If they treat us as some sort of international criminal conspiracy, they can."

"[Defending his purchase of a rare signed copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf] I'm a [video game] Call of Duty player right ... It's all about World War II and how you play and I'm a big fan of that. I've bought memorabilia from Churchill, from Stalin, from Hitler."

"Well let me make it absolutely clear, I'm not buying into the Nazi ideology. I'm totally against what the Nazis did."

"I think in another 100 years that book will probably go up in value times 10."

"What the US Govt is doing reminds me of what I learned in school about Nazi Germany. Ironic, Hollywood is run by mostly Jewish entrepreneurs."

"[T]he obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload."

"No, Colonel, I don't know any such cattle, and if I did I would, as your friend, sooner give you a dose of quick poison than take you into such danger."

"He told me much about himself in a very brief space, for he seemed to have more tongues than ears. I could not get a word in anywhere and you know I am too much in love with my own voice to like being suppressed and overtalked in that way, but enough of Dr. Tomblety. he seemed a good fellow after all."

"He then broke into a homily on the sin and folly of dissipation, fiercely denounced all women and especially fallen women."