Politicians From Italy

"As a Roman Catholic, I consider homosexuality a sin, but not a crime. Mine is a moral position that does not affect the rights that must be recognised for all."

"Berlusconi cannot act as a prophet of bipolarism, preaching rules that God has revealed only to him and that authorise him to contravene the rules of the Constitution. The Constitution is what it is. Berlusconi thinks that elections are held and that votes are like shares that can be put away. Instead, the people elect members of parliament, and they are accountable to the voters, not to Berlusconi."

"Di Pietro appeared to be someone capable of enforcing the law against bullies, a bit like Robin Hood."

"My party is called Popolare (People's Party) and I believe that the people still hold Christian values, including “thou shalt not steal”, which is one of the commandments. People saw Di Pietro as the embodiment of these values that we in the Popolare Party seek to represent, so it goes without saying that I would be delighted if Di Pietro were to join us."

"Mani Pulite began as a simple police operation in a case of bribery. Thanks to a fortunate combination of circumstances and the intelligence and tenacity of Judge Di Pietro, it developed into an investigation involving an entire political class. The mechanism that had protected the system of corruption until then had two pillars. The first was the belief that everyone did it and that therefore the laws had essentially fallen into disuse and only fools still felt bound by them. The second was the certainty that if, by chance, someone fell into the clutches of the law, powerful friends would protect them or, at least, compensate them. Antonio Di Pietro and his colleagues succeeded in subverting these two pillars."

"Those who attack the judiciary do so to find themselves an alibi... The primary enemy is corruption."

"When commemorating the anniversary of Falcone's death, one cannot attack magistrates."

"I am shocked by the idea that there are still people who take seriously Popper's analysis of Plato – “that bitter enemy of freedom”, as Marcello Pera uncritically describes him – without questioning the texts, checking the quotations or comparing them. These are elementary operations. Today, these may be unknown to most people, but they cannot escape the attention of a scholar who aspires to this role or who remembers them."

"(About Francesco De Martino) A great scholar and a great politician."

"For Kant, there are no different religions, but rather different forms of belief in divine revelation [...] among which Christianity, as far as we know, is the most appropriate."

"In everyday language, a secular person is someone who does not believe, while a secularist is someone who believes that those who believe have no reason to believe. This is not a tongue twister. Secular people do not base their worldview on revealed faith; secularists believe that any revealed faith is meaningless, except in a trivial, private sense, like a tic or a bad habit. The former does not believe, or cannot believe, but recognises that faith is a dimension of human experience that serves a purpose, such as giving meaning to life, attributing a role to humans in the world, and interpreting evil. The latter, the secularist, denies this dimension: for them, faith is an illusion or a misunderstanding or a failure of reason."

"It is nothing new that Italian relativists, and not only them, try to use Europe, where relativism is dominant, to achieve their goals at the national level. It is the hypocrisy with which many speak of Europe. [...] Unfortunately, this Europe is diminished in itself, and it is from this Europe that the worst vices are imported, circumventing national sovereignty."

"The left hates our culture and our civilisation to such an extent that it is willing to hand it over, as it is doing, to Islam. Its foreign policy is acquiescence to terrorist countries and groups; its domestic policy is free entry for all immigrants and cheap citizenship; its social policy is multiculturalism; therefore, its urban policy is to close the American base in Vicenza! Yesterday, today, always against the West. And since the West also and above all means Christianity, the left, in order to be anti-Western, has chosen anti-Christianity, that is, secularism. This is the new frontier, the new dividing line between us and the left."

"We are committed to reaffirming the value of Western civilisation as a source of universal and indispensable principles, opposing, in the name of a common historical and cultural tradition, any attempt to build a Europe that is alternative or opposed to the United States."

"In Europe, the population is declining, opening the door to uncontrolled immigration and leading to a mixed-race society."

"An ill wind is blowing across Europe. It is the idea that we just need to wait and the troubles will disappear on their own, or that we can be accommodating even to those who threaten us and we will get away with it. It is the same wind that blew in Munich in 1938."

"Berlusconi is halfway between a dapper cabaret artist and a television salesman selling kitchenware, something that would have inspired and distressed poor Fellini. (1994)"

"Revolution has strict rules and tight deadlines. (26 September 1993)"

"Judges must continue their work. No one is asking that prominent defendants receive different treatment from other defendants. (5 March 1993)"

"Guaranteeism, like any preconceived ideology, is pernicious. (29 March 1993)"

"The parties must step down and raise their hands... immediately and without the cunning that accompanies the death throes of their agony. That would be a coup against democracy: trying to resist the will of the people. (1 February 1993)"

"Giovanni Gentile was a philosopher dedicated to an undertaking so powerful that it had not been seen for centuries: to conceive, shape, organise and disseminate an Italian philosophy, that is, a philosophy for Italy, a philosophy of Italy, according to a tradition of political thought that Gentile saw as beginning with Dante and ending with himself. (2004)."

"I have read and reread all of Falcone's writings. He was a great man who saw things clearly. He did not like public prosecutors and judges being united in a single career and no longer believed in the mandatory nature of criminal prosecution, which, as it stands today, is nothing but a joke. I will say more: he would not have conducted the trials that Caselli subsequently did."

"As with the fall of other regimes, a new Resistance is needed, a new redemption and then a true, radical, merciless purge... The process has already begun and, for much of public opinion, has already ended with a conviction."

"There are two Pera, before and after treatment. Before, he was so punitive that he would have scared Antonio Di Pietro and caused Paolo Flores D'Arcais difficulties. Today, he is ultra-guaranteeist. Before, he was extremely secular, speaking ill of the law on fertilisation. Today, he defends it."

"The first results of our work show that among the names of the members of the Masonic Lodges of Calabria and Sicily, there are some who have been sentenced for 416 bis, i.e. for mafia association, and a considerable number of judicial situations in progress, defendants, remanded for trial, both of mafia crimes and of what we commonly call the spy crimes of mafia behaviour or in any case of collusion with the mafia. [...] For us, this investigation is very important, especially because we are talking about a sort of new mafia organisation that brings together pieces of the mafia, pieces of Freemasonry, the State, and the ruling classes of our country."

"(On the PD premier candidate's primaries) If Renzi wants to run for the primaries, he should resign from the PD, because the candidate is the PD secretary by statute. And if he is changed, then let him know that he will not be alone."

"Clearly, Berlusconi can no longer hold his majority together. It is a whole political phase that is coming to an end, for better or for worse. You see, Berlusconism has always been founded on ‘I am in charge here’. Now, given that the break with Fini is serious and that in the relationship with the Lega it is no longer the Cavaliere who has the ball in his hand, that method no longer works."

"[Speaking of who would preside over a ‘coalition of democratic emergency ’] Rosy Bindi. A woman who represents the reaction to one of the most painful points of the cultural regression, holds a key institutional role such as that of vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies, has the right profile to lead a rapid transition to normality."

"I do not accept lessons in political ethics from Bindi: she is ugly, mean and a cretin."

"I have nothing personal against D'Alema, Bindi, Veltroni and the others: but they didn't make it. And so I say it, with the utmost respect and humility, but I say it: that's enough now, it's the turn of others. Their time is really over."

"Of course, if Rosy Bindi took the time this summer to reread the PD statute, she could not have failed to see that there is a rule preventing her from running for more than three terms. She is on her sixth."

"(On the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022) [...] these seven months of war tell us that the longer it goes on, the more complicated the road to a ceasefire and a possible understanding becomes. [...] I know that sitting at the table with the aggressor is repugnant, but compromise is also sought with the aggressor."

"(About the supply of weapons to Ukraine following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022) If I had been in parliament, I would have voted to send weapons, at least at the beginning, because an attacked country must be helped to defend itself."

"[...] the path of the war is creating an untenable situation for Ukrainee, for Russia and for Europe."

"[...] with this electoral law that provides for alternating lists, if a woman accepts multiple candidacies, she knows perfectly well that she leaves the place to men."

"[...] I would like us to overcome the two specular vices of the Italian Left: that of division and the minority and group tendency, and that of subalternity to the dominant liberalism thought imbued with manias of governmentalism."

"I have a busy agenda since 2018, I am not a member of the P also because the PD has never shown that it needs me."

"(On the appointment of the new secretary of the Democratic Party) The secretary or secretary is chosen after identifying the political community that he or she is to represent."

"The Pd needs clarity. Are they holding a congress? Let it avoid being just the election of a secretary."

"To the Pd, however, I reproach it for being too flat on supporting the Draghi government. It was right to support him, but it was necessary to be able to make it understood that the project of the left that was running to govern the country had another vision."

"But why does the Pd leave peace, work, the fight against poverty to others?"

"Berlusconi has changed Italy a lot, but as far as I am concerned he has not changed it for the better, mainly because he has cleared certain attitudes towards women, money, and the sense of institutions. Berlusconi had a patronising attitude with all things in the world, such as women, politics, power, the relationship between public and private. He had a patrimonial relationship with all things and with all people around him. And that was unacceptable to me."

"The National Mourning for Berlusconi is inappropriate and misplaced. [...] I think that national mourning should be reserved for personalities who have united the country and not for those who have divided it, for people who have distinguished themselves for particular achievements, for personalities of art and culture, for those who have sacrificed their lives for the country. But I find national mourning inappropriate for a Prime Minister who was much loved but who was also capable of not being loved by others. And who was divisive on fundamental issues, such as the sense of institutions, respect for the Constitution, respect for women, the country's image around the world. Why the national mourning? Why should all the country's institutions have a flag at half-mast and Parliament be stopped? [...] We are in a phase of sanctification, carried out by its TV stations but also by RAI, which is not good for the country and does not correspond to the truth."

"Malta has long been under observation because it has become a place where the Italian mafia operates in drug trafficking, gambling, immigration and oil trafficking: all businesses involving Italian citizens"

"Cosa nostra of Sicily and the 'ndrangheta of Calabria have from time immemorial and consistently to this day nurtured and cultivated a heightened interest in Freemasonry. [...] On the part of the Masonic associations, there has been a sort of surrender to the mafia. It is the cases, certainly the most recurrent, in which a form of mere tolerance is found that prove to be the most worrying."

"[Regarding the upcoming elections for President of the Italian Republic in 2013] Franco Marini turned 80 last week and is preparing for his last attempt to crown a career marked by prudence, impartiality, good neighbourliness, and always in the name of popular wisdom, of which he is considered a masterful prophet."

"With Franco Marini as secretary of the CISL, we were at opposite ends of the trade union spectrum. He was to the right of Carniti, while I challenged Trentin from the left. [...] Franco Marini represented that part of the CISL that had undergone radicalisation in the 1970s and, with the capitalist restoration of the 1980s, had gradually regained control of the organisation, progressively marginalising Carniti's supporters and normalising the FIM, the metalworkers' union, in particular. He was a true Christian Democrat, not particularly left-wing within the party, indeed quite unpopular with De Mita and Martinazzoli's wing. But he was also the expression of a popular and mass idea of trade unionism and politics that has nothing to do with what is happening today. This is why, in today's politics, he could have ended up almost on the extreme left. Not because he had changed, he was always the same, but because the whole political spectrum had shifted to the right towards business and the market."

"(About [[w:Carlo Donat-Cattin]|Carlo Donat-Cattin]]]) A life characterised by a refusal to compromise. He paid a heavy price for this conception of political dignity, was not always understood, and many friends turned their backs on him."

"Renzi has unbridled ambition, sometimes he speaks without thinking, he's just looking for headlines. If he doesn't moderate this ambition, he'll end up going off the rails. (April 21, 2013)"