"I’ve been dealing with Iran for close to 40 years. It took me a long time to get our security establishment to deal with Iran itself. It also took a long time to bring the United States to this understanding. I was able to do that because I had close to a thousand hours on American television."

"The Fascist Regime, surpassing the prejudices of liberalism in this as in every other field, has thus repudiated the principle of religious agnosticism of the State, because the separation between Church and State is just as absurd as the separation between spirit and matter. With profound faith in the religious and Catholic mission of the Italian people, the Fascist Government has methodically proceeded with a series of administrative acts and legislative measures to restore to the State and to the Italian Nation that character of the Catholic State and the Catholic Nation that liberal politics had tried to eliminate for so many years. And the Fascist Regime has done this with full spontaneity and with absolute selflessness, without hesitations nor deviations, even when its efforts were misunderstood or poorly recognized, because we regard this as the fulfillment of a high duty, not as an instrument or, worse still, as a political maneuver...

...I have always considered the conflict between Church and State to be fatal for both, and historically fatal, in a more or less distant time, to its composition. If they will announce very soon the news you are about to receive, I will have profound joy. If the situation is otherwise, then we will continue to wait for better times and perform with firm conscience, just as before, our duty as Italians and Catholics."