Presidents Of The European Council

"Mr Tusk, who has been given to using the analogies of the divorce and divorce petition, is behaving like a cuckolded husband who is taking it out on the children."

"The good thing is that all the symbolic elements are gone, and that which really matters – the core – is left."

"I was deeply distressed that the cartoons were seen by many Muslims as an attempt by Denmark to mark and insult or behave disrespectfully towards Islam or Mohammed."

"It could never happen in Denmark, Danish people are much more calm than those further south."

"I often use Sweden as a discouraging example to promte a free and open debate and maintain a strict immigration policy."

"Iraq has WMDs. It is not something we think, it is something we know. Iraq has itself admitted that it has had mustard gas, nerve gas, anthrax, but Saddam won't disclose. He won't tell us where and how these weapons have been destroyed. We know this from the UN inspectors, so there is no doubt in my mind."

"That's what it's like when people have crawled very high up in a tree, then they sometimes need help to get down with ladders and ropes and other instruments."

"The Nordic welfare model is in many aspects a good model but it needs more of a choice for individuals."

"Om alla liknar Carl bekräftas vanföreställningarna av moderaterna. Det blir ett parti för Carl Bildt-kopior."

"Ursvenskt är bara barbariet. Resten av utvecklingen har kommit utifrån. [...] Det kan ibland vara bra att ödmjukt påminna om att väldigt mycket av det som är Sverige har skapats i utveckling, just för att vi varit öppna för att ta emot andra människor och andra erfarenheter"

"I våldets Sverige så får hederliga medborgare flytta åt sidan. I rädsla för att vara nästa som drabbas av våldsverkaren, med vapen i hand, med drogögon mitt i ansiktet, så vet vi inte vad den här personen är kapabel att göra"

"Ska vi vara ärliga så är en hel del av jobbproblematiken kopplad till utrikes födda."

"We have a strong economy but we don't have the job creation we need. We want more job creation."

"What has begun in this evening will not stay for a long time, and because you represent the forces of the world of labour, you, forces of the youth, your victory is inevitable."

"Behind each great man, there's a Richard Delisle."

"For me Greece is Maria Farantouri. This is how I imagined Goddess Hera to be: strong, pure and vigilant. I have never encountered any other artist able to give me such a strong sense of the divine."

"The man of the past."

"One must defeat their prejudices. What I demand you here is almost impossible, for we have to defeat our history. And yet, if we do not defeat it, one must know a rule will impose itself, ladies and gentlemen: nationalism is war! War is not only our past, it may be our future; and you members of parliament are henceforth the guardians of our peace, of our security, and of this future."

"I believe in the forces of the spirit, and I won't leave you."

"In such countries, genocide is not too important…"

"I would like to say, sincerity. But it is, in fact, indifference."

"The 1980s was a radical conservative decade, and even in states where socialist or Labour governments were elected, the drift away from Marxism, collectivism and all the traditional ‘isms’ of the Left was marked. The process was particularly notable in France. The election of the socialist François Mitterrand as President in 1981, after twenty-three years of Gaullism and its successors, introduced a brief period of socialist egalitarianism and anti-business policies, which led in rapid succession to three devaluations of the franc; thereafter, the French Socialist Party moved sharply to the Right and to free-market policies; and in the later 1980s and early 1990s, alternations in power between socialist and Conservative prime ministers appeared to make little difference, in economic policy, defence or foreign affairs."

"We are an enemy of the nuclear threat and we are an enemy of testing nuclear weapons in the South Pacific. New Zealand did not buy into this fight. France put agents into New Zealand. France put spies into New Zealand. France lets off bombs in the Pacific. France puts its President in the Pacific to crow about it."

"It's been quite a journey this decade, and we held together through some stormy seas. And at the end, together, we are reaching our destination. The fact is, from Grenada to the Washington and Moscow summits, from the recession of '81 to '82, to the expansion that began in late '82 and continues to this day, we've made a difference. The way I see it, there were two great triumphs, two things that I'm proudest of. One is the economic recovery, in which the people of America created—and filled—19 million new jobs. The other is the recovery of our morale. America is respected again in the world and looked to for leadership. Something that happened to me a few years ago reflects some of this. It was back in 1981, and I was attending my first big economic summit, which was held that year in Canada. The meeting place rotates among the member countries. The opening meeting was a formal dinner of the heads of government of the seven industrialized nations. Now, I sat there like the new kid in school and listened, and it was all Francois this and Helmut that. They dropped titles and spoke to one another on a first-name basis. Well, at one point I sort of leaned in and said, "My name's Ron." Well, in that same year, we began the actions we felt would ignite an economic comeback—cut taxes and regulation, started to cut spending. And soon the recovery began. Two years later, another economic summit with pretty much the same cast. At the big opening meeting we all got together, and all of a sudden, just for a moment, I saw that everyone was just sitting there looking at me. And then one of them broke the silence. "Tell us about the American miracle," he said."

"Power corrupts, and, in many cases, absolute power makes you really horny. Clinton, Chirac, Mao, Mitterrand."

"Of course, peace might have come to Europe without the Union. Maybe. We will never know. But it would never have been of the same quality. A lasting peace, not a frosty cease-fire. To me, what makes it so special, is reconciliation. In politics as in life, reconciliation is the most difficult thing. It goes beyond forgiving and forgetting, or simply turning the page. To think of what France and Germany had gone through …, and then take this step … Signing a Treaty of Friendship … Each time I hear these words – Freundschaft, Amitié –, I am moved. They are private words, not for treaties between nations. But the will to not let history repeat itself, to do something radically new, was so strong that new words had to be found. For people Europe was a promise, Europe equalled hope. When Konrad Adenauer came to Paris to conclude the Coal and Steel Treaty, in 1951, one evening he found a gift waiting at his hotel. It was a war medal, une Croix de Guerre, that had belonged to a French soldier. His daughter, a young student, had left it with a little note for the Chancellor, as a gesture of reconciliation and hope. I can see many other stirring images before me. Leaders of six States assembled to open a new future, in Rome, città eterna … Willy Brandt kneeling down in Warsaw. The dockers of Gdansk, at the gates of their shipyard. Mitterrand and Kohl hand in hand. Two million people linking Tallinn to Riga to Vilnius in a human chain, in 1989. These moments healed Europe."

"There exists in our country a solid continuity of Bonapartism, where the vocation for grandeur of France, the monarchist tradition, and the passion for national unity, the Jacobin tradition get together."

"To every reversal of people’s soveregnity, to every disappearance of the Republic corresponds a frank or disguised restitution in force of the regal justice. ‘’Tell me, according to what you judge and I’ll tell you who you are.” […] No axiom in politics is more certain than this."

"Time magazine reported him as speaking of "upsetting the apple tart"."

"He's the man. He's the best, the most skilful, the most devious, and the most cunning of them all."

"It took Ireland thirty years to become an overnight success."

"That decision will in history be written as the biggest mistake that American administration ever made, because Lehmans was a world investment bank. They had testicles everywhere."

"It is not correct, and if I said so, I was not correct — I cannot recall if I said it, but I did not say, or if I did, I did not mean to say it"

"It was a political donation for my personal use."

"Some people dye their hair yellow or put rings in their noses"

"The reason it's on the rise is because probably the boom times are getting even more boomer."

"Did Ahern, in his 11 years of power, make the most of this unprecedented prosperity for the public benefit? The answer can hardly be positive, given the present state of health, education and infrastructure, generally."

"We can spit on Bertie Ahern till our mouths run dry, but he didn’t invent the amorality of our public culture. He was never a large enough figure to be able to shape the way Irish society thinks and feels. He was just an artful dodger, a skilled exploiter of the opportunities created by widespread tolerance for ingratiating chancers."

"governments can defer these things for a period and then, as they've previously done, go back and pay it all again. I mean, that's really only playing smokes and daggers with it."

"I continued the arrangement, so whatever was on my mind, and the reason I probably can't give you a better reflection of what I was doing on the 19th of January is because I didn't do it. I am sure there are some mornings you get up and you think I might do this or I might do that and then you don't do them so, its hard to remember."

"It is quite unacceptable that a member of Dáil Éireann and in particular a Cabinet Minister and Taoiseach, should be supported in his personal lifestyle by gifts made to him personally."

"The public are entitled to have an absolute guarantee of the financial probity and integrity of their elected representatives, their officials and above all of Ministers. They need to know that they are under financial obligations to nobody."

"I have always found him to be a proud, honourable man, loyal, true, persevering, principled, caring and committed but tough and a person who lost friends easily. On behalf of the Government but in particular on behalf of the Fianna Fáil Party, I thank him for his distinguished years of service to his constituents and his country."

"I never condemn wrongdoing in any area"

"I don't know how people who engage in that don't commit suicide"