This Week They Said

The best hopes of everyone have not been realised. We are going to have to look at the situation as it is

The best hopes of everyone have not been realised. We are going to have to look at the situation as it is. - Green Party negotiator Dan Boyle as the Greens hold talks with Fianna Fáil on the possible formation of a government.

They're nothing but pawns of the empire.

- Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez criticises university students who have staged protests over his decision to force an opposition TV station off the air.

Where's Bono? Bono for president.

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- US president George Bush, to an aide. He was about to meet the U2 singer to discuss ways to fight global poverty.

If you want me to say that we could have done better, then, yes. I want to speak frankly.

- French president Nicolas Sarkozy after G8 leaders agree to negotiate a new deal to fight climate change.

Of course I am an absolute, pure democrat. . .The thing is that I am the only one, there just aren't any others in the world.

- Russian president Putin says the US and Europe failed to live up to their political ideals.

She has been fitted with an ankle bracelet, and she has been sent home.

- Steve Whitmore, spokesman for the LA county sheriff's department, as Paris Hilton is released from prison after serving five days of a 45-day sentence.

I just ask you to spell my name right.

- Occasionally meddlesome media tycoon Rupert Murdoch tells the Wall Street Journal he will not interfere in its news coverage if he takes control of the paper.

I cannot participate in a charade that does injustice to the people of Sierra Leone.

- Former president of Liberia Charles Taylor says he will not attend his war crimes trial at the UN-backed special court for Sierra Leone.

He says the world is prettier now.

- Polish housewife Gertruda Grzebaska after her husband Jan wakes from a 19-year coma to find the Communist Party no longer in power.

You can't sit there and worry about everything. Get a life!

- Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, says citizens should not live in fear after four suspects were arrested in an alleged plot to blow up JFK airport.

When I'm speaking for the harmonisation of the tax base I'm not representing Hungarian interest but the community interest. Mr McCreevy is representing the national interest of Ireland.

- EU taxation commissioner László Kovács says internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy is still acting as if he was Ireland's finance minister.

It is without a doubt bad news; we must live with this reality and we must work from this base.

- Pedro Solbes, Spain's minister for finance, after Basque separatist group Eta announces an end to its cease-fire.

Was there an open competition to supply the designs? If so, what on earth do the rejected ones look like?

- 2012 Olympics spokesman Bob Neil condemns the recently unveiled logo for the London games as "hideous".

Every third-level academic prepared to speak honestly admits a great many students coming through from second level now show remarkable deficiencies in literacy and numeracy and have little or no sense of the art of learning.

- Dr Martin O'Grady of the Institute of Technology in Tralee amid claims of "grade inflation" in the Leaving Certificate.