A biography for Luiz Inacio Lula da Silvahasn’t been written yet.
“They were two and a half decades in which Brazil had no capacity to invest in infrastructure. Just to give you an idea, in 1989, we had in Brazil about 50,000 project-engineering businesses. When I took office, there were just 8,000. Universities were no longer turning out engineers.”
“If there was one last thing I could do in my life, it would be to help Dilma turn this country around, with the decency that the Brazilian public deserves.”
“We've advanced in the construction of a true free-trade area across South America... What's needed now is less rhetoric and more action.”
“The financial system has to be regulated, we have to end with the tax havens, and it's necessary that the central banks in the world should control a little bit the banks' financing because they cannot bypass a certain range of leverage.”
“When President Kirchner complains, I often sympathise with him, because Argentina was deindustrialised, and it is perfectly normal for the president of a country to try to get industry back.”
“I have known Evo Morales for many years, since the days of the union movement. From a historical and sociological standpoint, the election of Evo Morales is extraordinary, with great prospects and potential for the Bolivian people.”
“Everyone is innocent unless proven otherwise.”
“If, at the end of my mandate, all Brazilians have the possibility to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, I will have fulfilled the mission of my life.”
“Latin America is convinced that, starting with South America, our way forward is to consolidate the process of integration: not theoretical integration - the integration of speeches - but physical integration, with infrastructure, with roads, with railways, with communications, with energy.”
“I believe together, with the OAS, everybody condemned the coup d'etat, and everybody is demanding that President Zelaya should go back to the presidency, and they should call for general elections and realize an election. That's what we want. And I believe that President Obama made the right decisions condemning the coup d'etat.”
“You're going to be hearing a lot about one scrappy president.”
“I have suggested that Brazilian enterprises invest in Uruguay and Paraguay. These are small economies, so some things can be produced in these countries that will give them greater and more equitable involvement in the Mercosur game.”
“What most surprises me about Brazil is the extent of the difficulties that we create for ourselves. We create a lot of legislation to control the Brazilian state itself, that this ends up meaning that things don't go with the speed any head of government would like.”
“In Brazil, a poor man goes to jail when he steals. When a rich man steals, he becomes a minister.”