Lula da Silva Quotes…
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (born; 27 October 1945),known mononymously as Lula, is a Brazilian politician and trade unionist. After previously serving as 35th president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010, he is the current president-elect of Brazil, and is expected to be inaugurated as the 39th President in 2023. He was a founding member of the left-wing Workers’ Party (PT) and ran unsuccessfully for president three times before achieving victory in the 2002 Brazilian general election. He was re-elected in 2006. In May 2021, Lula stated that he would run for a third term in the 2022 Brazilian general election, against the incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro. He was elected president on 30 October 2022, defeating Bolsonaro in a close race. He is the first person to be democratically elected as president of Brazil three times, and the second to be elected to non-consecutive presidential terms (after Getúlio Vargas).
Lula da Silva Quotes
I am the son of an illiterate father and mother.
No one can reap the fruit before planting the trees.
Everyone is innocent unless proven otherwise.
You’re going to be hearing a lot about one scrappy president.
Free trade is very important if we respect equality among nations.
It is important to remember that I am not in the G-8; I am just an invited guest.
In Brazil, a poor man goes to jail when he steals. When a rich man steals, he becomes a minister.
A war can perhaps be won single-handedly. But peace – lasting peace – cannot be secured without the support of all.
My greatest desire is that the hope that has overcome fear in my country will help vanquish it around the world.
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.
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.
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.
I don’t need arms, and neither does anyone else… At the very least, a ban would prevent fights from turning deadly.
Venezuela needs to develop; economic growth is essential for the country after so many years of lagging behind.
“That way we will have healthy food on our plates, clean air to breathe and water to drink and lots of quality jobs with green investment.”
Brazil is in a solid position. In the past, if the United States sneezed, we caught pneumonia. Today, if the United States sneezes, we sneeze too.
“Instead of being world leaders in deforestation, we want to be world champions in facing up to the climate crisis and in socio-environmental development,”
I have stated publicly, I want the same things for Iran that I want for Brazil. I want them to use and develop their nuclear energy for peaceful means.
The thing is that we live in a presidential system with a parliamentary constitution. Congress has a lot of weight in Brazil, and the president cannot always do when he wants; he does what he can.
Since 1990, we have been building up the idea that democracy is the best way for sectors that feel socially excluded from politics to win power.
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.
Brazil has rediscovered itself, and this rediscovery is being expressed in its people’s enthusiasm and their desire to mobilize to face the huge problems that lie ahead of us.
Brazil is a country that has rich people, as you have in New York City, as you have in Berlin or in London. But we also have poor people like in Bangladesh or in African suburbs.
From the first of January there won’t be two Brazils, we are one – we don’t want to fight anymore, it’s time to lay down our weapons that should never have been raised in the first place.”
“Starting on January 1, 2023, I will govern for the 215 million Brazilians, not just the ones who voted for me. There are not two Brazils. We are one country, one people, one great nation,”
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.
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.
No one has to agree with everything that someone else says. But in state-to-state relations, we have to understand that we can help each other much more doing it that way. We have to be more generous.
I know what unemployment means because I was unemployed for one-and-a-half years, and I know the drama that the worker and unemployed worker faces. I know the world of the labor union better than I think anyone else does.
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 learned during my term and in the presidency that we should not discuss about assumptions or insinuations. If one day I have to do something against the U.S., the first one to get to know what I was going to do would be the president of the U.S.
A long time ago I learned not to put the blame for backwardness in Brazil on the US. We have to blame ourselves. Our backwardness is caused by an elite which for a century didn’t think about the majority and subordinated itself to foreign interests.
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 my opinion, the Doha Round is the most important thing that we can do to reduce inequalities, create opportunities, and develop the poorest countries, face up to the struggle against terrorism and strengthen democracy.
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.
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.
It is a coup because while the Brazilian Constitution allows for impeachment, it’s necessary for the person to have committed what we call high crimes and misdemeanors. And President Dilma did not commit a high crime nor misdemeanor. Therefore, what is happening is an attempt by some to take power by disrespecting the popular vote.
I took office as president in January 2003, and in April 2003, I sent to Congress my first proposal for tax reform. Some parts were voted on, with respect to federal taxes, and then it came to a standstill. Why? Because each state is interested in its own tax reform, has its own tax policy, and each state has its federal deputies and senators.
We politicians reap what we sow. If I sow fraternity, solidarity, harmony, I’ll reap good things. If I sow discord, I’ll reap quarrels. Putin shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine. But it’s not just Putin who is guilty. The U.S. and the E.U. are also guilty. What was the reason for the Ukraine invasion? NATO? Then the U.S. and Europe should have said: “Ukraine won’t join NATO.” That would have solved the problem.
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. Brazil does not want to become an exporter of crude oil. No. We want to be a country that exports oil byproducts – more gasoline, high-quality oil – and to strengthen the petrochemical industry.
When I left the presidency in 2010, I was not planning to be a presidential candidate again. But in the 12 years since I left office, I see that all the policies I created to benefit the poor—all our social inclusion policies, everything we did to improve universities, technical schools, improving salaries, improving the quality of jobs—all that was destroyed, dismantled. Because the people who started to occupy the government after the coup that took Dilma [Rousseff] out, were people who wanted to destroy all of the things that the Brazilian people had won after 1943.
