Quotes from Beppe Grillo

My comedy routines have always been about the health of the nation.

I started using my blog to get information about cities I was about to visit, asking followers what the main problems there were. Many mentioned misconduct of politicians and other things I wanted to talk about during my shows. Then, before a show in one city, local politicians called saying they would sue if I said something unpleasant.

We've delegated politics to bankers. The European Central Bank is inside Deutsche Bank, and Deutsche Bank is inside the Bundesbank.

From the Americans, I took the meet-up platform, from Howard Dean. He used it to gather money. I use it to gather information, to gather forums, not money. This we copied from the United States, the use of the Internet.

Left, right, populism... all are meaningless concepts.

Italy has turned its back on its political class, and a new language of community, identity, and honesty is filling the gap.

I'm a comedian. You have to understand that my brain doesn't work like a politician's brain.

It's a very beautiful word, populism. I'm proud to be a populist.

I'm so proud of being a populist!

My anger is constructive.

When you have a debt that's strangling you, you're not growing.

This world - the Western world - has failed. We must have a plan B. We're the plan B.

For the Americans, laws are barriers to profits; it's a different mentality.

One of our main objectives is to restore meritocracy within research and academia, where cronyism is also widespread. We also want to give money back to public research that is dying.

The ECB puts out money that is meant to help our banks, but they do not use it to finance our businesses, but they give it to them to buy back their debt, to help French and German banks.

I threw my TV out years ago.

When China was only Communist, everyone received the Dalai Lama, but now that China is hyper-capitalist, he gets blacked out.

Italy is a tough country to be a comedian in - I can't invent stuff like this. Nearly eighty crooks in Parliament - that's about one crook in twelve. It's worse than Scampia, the most dangerous Naples slum, which is infested by the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia. There, the criminals are only one in fifteen!

In 2005, I had a blog, where people discussed topics such as a sustainable economy, renewable energy, and broadband coverage.

My dream is universal income, with a completely different fiscal system to finance it.

Artificial intelligence is destroying the traditional world of work.

Europe was born with Jean Monnet but then was progressively transformed.

The Internet creates transparency, creates a change of mentality, brings people together.

This is what the establishment is scared of: Of joy, the sense of humour, of irony.