135 quotes found
"Questa azienda ha una maledizione e solo un esorcista puo' salvarla."
"A normal chap, a man who likes creating things. A good worker in the morning, and a man who likes enjoying himself in the afternoon."
"One day in Modena I was entering a restaurant when I recognized Ferrari sitting at one of the tables. As I passed I tried to greet him, but he turned his head away and pretended to be talking to the person next to him. He was ignoring me! I used to have contact with Adolfo and Omer Orsi of Maserati, Renzo Rivolta of ISO, even Alejandro de Tomaso. But Ferrari never spoke to me again. He was a great man, I admit, but it was so very easy to upset him."
"To me, technology serves as an answer to the curiosity of humans. Looking back to history, human curiosity has driven progress, increased awareness, and knowledge, ultimately leading to the discovery of new applications that we now define as technology."
"Juventus is a great love, and this is its secret. A love from everyone, and obviously from my family, which is passed down from generation to generation; these colors are part of my children's lives too."
"We have been reflecting on the journey we have taken since the foundation of FIAT back in 1899 because, though we are proud of our past achievements, we are most interested in what we can learn from them, and also what we can learn from our mistakes."
"Today Gianni would be disappointed as all we Ferrari fans are. But I am optimistic because we have two young drivers: they are not 'used to winning' but they have a great desire to 'train to win' with their humility and determination, they are infecting the whole team with this."
"LaStampa has always been a free newspaper because of its economical sustainability, and we're proud of it. It's the only way for a newspaper to be independent."
"Many things are linked to being able to live with uncertainty, ...with paradoxes. But this can be a strength of an organisation and a situation."
"I was born in New York, then I went to the UK, then I went to Brazil, then I went to France, then I studied in Italy. My life was always about being confronted with an environment where you had to adapt."
"(talking about his children) I'm interested in avoiding two types of behaviour: one is the sense of guilt and the other is a sense of entitlement. If these two are avoided, then the rest is up to them."
"I am a big believer of what Darwin discovered in the Galapagos, proving that the species most responsive to change will survive over apparently stronger or more intelligent competitors."
"As an entrepreneur you have responsibilities in trying to operate well in what you have to do. There is a positive effect if you end up doing that. That’s where I try to spend most of my efforts."
"The lesson I have learnt is that when a family and a business function, they function together. You have to have a family that works and a business that works and the two will end up working well alongside."
"I learnt not to be desperate in bad times, and I am learning not to be bullish when times are good."
"Artists have a sensibility that others don't have. They have a way of reading into the future."
"Responsibility is something that you have. And I've, I've personally always felt responsible, felt responsible since a very, very early age as we were growing up in many different countries and we had divorced parents and were very much very close to my siblings. And always trying to be responsible in school settings, sport settings and taking on responsibility was definitely something that I always was drawn to. Difficulties are the moments in which you can show courage and you can show responsibility for others. And over the course of more than 20, so getting close to 30 years, that I've been involved as a director of Fiat back in 1997, there have been many moments of time where that responsibility was acted on."
"A great CEO is someone who's really interested in the job, not the title. And who's really interested in competing in the pure sense of what it means, and really likes not only the company, but likes the people with whom he works. A great CEO is also someone who has the ability of thinking long term, but also acting now. Being strategic, but yet being operational."
"The advice to young people is, first of all, they need to be optimistic about the future because the future is theirs and they have the responsibility of building that future. And that's not daunting, it's exciting. On a more practical, I think the advice that my grandfather gave me remains true. To listen and ask questions, and in some ways curiosity and learning are really what you need to start young at."
"He is extremely intelligent and has a great sense of responsibility. I've seen, in the past few years, he has managed several crises with extreme dignity and wisdom."
"John was in exactly the right place at the right time to understand manufacturing at its deepest level — at a cellular level. His apprenticeship culminated in an insight that was critical to Fiat’s survival. He noticed a persistent gap between what happens on the factory floor of, say, a headlight plant in Birmingham, and what information filters up to headquarters."
"Re-structuring and modernizing a media business in the current environment is a challenge; if anybody can make it work in Italy, that is John. He has vision with no illusion, a great passion for Italy, a set of principles rooted in tradition, which helps him being an innovator, and has a great business sense about opportunities.” Robert Thomson La Dolce Vita dei Media, Air Mail, October 2020."
"John spends a lot of time, in a very thoughtful and deliberate way, forming his opinions and then considering how these future trends are going to affect his companies. It's not surprising that he does this, but I'd say the quality with which he does it is very impressive."
"In moments of crisis, when you don't really know where things are going, I need to have trusted contacts. He's one of them."
"Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough. (26 July 2016, speech to Global Investment Conference in London)"
"In Greece, the position at the outset was particularly difficult, so now we have to be particularly patient with the country. That's no surprise."
"It is too early to assess the policies of the new German government. I can only say that the crisis has shown that the monetary union is incomplete and that the weaknesses need to be remedied. Germany helps the euro best by further strengthening its competitiveness and promoting growth."
"One needs a complex package of policies and, as we always stress, structural reforms come first, because many of the problems of the euro area are structural. And I'm sure that's also the biggest fear for the Governing Council as a whole. We discussed the possibility of negative deposit rates, but our objective is maintaining price stability."
"The crisis has not been overcome, but there are many encouraging signs. The economy is recovering in many countries, the imbalances in European trade are declining and the budget deficits in the monetary union are falling."
"The signals from the monetary analysis confirm the picture of subdued underlying price pressures in the euro area over the medium term."
"... "the Continent's traditional social contract" - perhaps its major contribution to contemporary civilization - "is obsolete" and must be dismantled."
"(Italian language) L'appello a non vaccinarsi è un appello a morire sostanzialmente - non ti vaccini, ti ammali, muori - oppure fai morire - non ti vaccini, ti ammali, contagi lui lei muore -, questo è."
"The gap between countries that embrace innovation and those that hesitate, Draghi explained, will widen significantly in the coming years, which is why Europe is now facing a moment of truth: over the last twenty years, we have gone from being a continent that welcomed new technologies, narrowing the gap with the United States, to one that has progressively placed barriers to innovation and its adoption. We have already seen this in the first phase of the digital revolution, when European productivity growth fell to about half the US rate, with almost all of the divergence coming from the technology sector. Now this pattern is repeating itself with the artificial intelligence revolution. Last year, the United States produced 40 major fundamental models, China 15, and the European Union only three. The same pattern can be observed in many other frontier technologies, from biotechnology to advanced materials to nuclear fusion. [...] Economic history indicates that mass unemployment is not the most likely outcome. Previous technological revolutions suggest this."
"ECB [European Central Bank] President Mario Draghi’s famous promise to do ‘whatever it takes’ to preserve the eurozone was a masterly move to buy time. But monetary policy cannot solve the currency union’s problems."
"Our friendship goes back many decades, to when we shared a common plane. Over the years, over the decades, I have had enormous respect for Mr. Draghi. He has had an extraordinary capacity for intellectual analysis of issues that focused on the common good and not just the immediate. [He is the] symbol of a generational challenge. [He has carried out] extraordinarily complicated tasks because it was believed, and it turned out to be correct, that he would analyze the problems and not approach them from a biased position. [He is] a man with a unique ability to analyze situations and contribute to their solution."
"We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends."
"There is in gardens a plant which one ought to leave dry, although most people water it. It is the weed called envy."
"All those things [meaning works of art] have given me the greatest satisfaction and contentment because they are not only for the honor of God but are likewise for my own remembrance. For fifty years, I have done nothing else but earn money and spend money; and it became clear that spending money gives me greater pleasure than earning it."
"Political questions are settled in [Cosimo's] house. The man he chooses holds office... He it is who decides peace and war... He is king in all but name."
"[Cosimo was] the father of a line of princes, whose name and age are almost synonymous with the restoration of learning; his credit was ennobled into fame; his riches were dedicated to the service of mankind; he corresponded at once with Cairo and London; and a cargo of Indian spices and Greek books were often imported in the same vessel."
"Cosimo de' Medici... [was] a citizen of rare wisdom and inestimable riches, and therefore most celebrated all over Europe, especially because he had spent over 400,000 ducats in building churches, monasteries and other sumptuous edifices not only in his own country but in many other parts of the world, doing all this with admirable magnificence and truly regal spirit, since he had been more concerned with immortalizing his name than providing for his descendants."
"My path to vegetarianism was a slow one, it was something I thought about for a long time, and when I read “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer, something in me clicked. I believe that feeding oneself shouldn’t require torturing animals, and that one can take pleasure in food even without meat. … Young people who follow me know that Love Therapy refers to food that doesn’t cause harm to living animals or our planet. … I try to stick to a vegetarian diet because I think what humans are doing to animals is terrible. When I shop, I concentrate on fruits and vegetables. Everyone has a goal, and mine right now is to become vegan – I think of them as modern saints, as they make sacrifices for a better, collective good."
"I am a fascist and will die a fascist."
"I personally have done much to have the excommunication of Freemasons removed from the new Code of Canon Law. In its time Freemasonry collaborated in ecumenical activity, then in the drafting of the Canon Code, on the concept that Christian unity also passes through those Anglican and Protestant bishops and pastors, as well as Orthodox, who are Freemasons. Freemasonry also participated in the creation of the Concordated Bible."
"Every morning I speak to my conscience and the dialogue calms me down. I look at the country, read the newspaper, and think: 'All is becoming a reality little by little, piece by piece'. To be truthful, I should have had the copyright to it. Justice, TV, public order. I wrote about this 30 years ago.... Berlusconi is an extraordinary man, a man of action. This is what Italy needs: not a man of words, but a man of action."
"It is not up to us to deliver judgments. Only God will be able to tell the truth."
"Mussolini was the son of a blacksmith, Hitler was the son of a house painter and I am the son of a miller."
"[Journalist:] So none of your plan came to fruition in your opinion? [Gelli:] mah I see on the other hand that everyone is a little watered down. Everyone took some cues from it on the other hand I can't say more. Also because he was aimed only at good. They should, I don't say, talk to me about certain rights. I don't even ask for them because it was not possible to file it with SIAE."
"The real power lies in the hands of the media owners."
"[About the P2] My Plan of Democratic Rebirth? I see that 20 years later this Bicameral [the D'Alema Bicameral Parliament Commission] is copying it piece by piece, with the Boato draft. Better late than never. They should at least give me the copyright."
"The real power lies in the hands of the holders of the Mass Media."
"We had Italy in our hands. We would never have wanted to attack, but we were like a sentinel, carefully ensuring that the Communist party should never emerge."
"[journalist:] what can you tell us about the carnages? I asked her who is behind the carnages. [Gelli:] but you see, there have always been these massacres here. And there always will be. Oh yes, because there is no order. And also in recent times, because in the early days there were no massacres. They possibly took place after '60; before 1960 they never occurred. It's from the '60s: and why am I talking about the '60s? Because in 1960 there was still a certain condition that the people had emerged from a dictatorship of fascism - call it the dictatorship of fascism - and the people had gotten used to working and had to go to work because otherwise they would have been punished and wouldn't have had to go on strike because with the strike it is not that it occurs; the strike makes people more poor."
"Would Giulio Andreotti have been the true "master" of the P2 Lodge? For heaven's sake... I had the P2, Cossiga the Gladio and Andreotti the Ring."
"With P2 we had Italy in our hands. Then there was the Army, Financial Police, Police: they were clearly commanded by all people from the P2 Masonic lodge. [...] We never wanted to attack and we couldn't attack, but we were a sentinel to prevent the Communist Party from emerging."
"Italy, it must be recorded with honesty, albeit bemusement, has produced few more remarkable individuals this century than Licio Gelli."
"I think every citizen of Bologna has a reaction to that surname. It would have been good if he had never set foot in our country and our city."
"Licio Gelli: In this country there is only one charismatic figure who can truly lead it: Silvio Berlusconi."
"Gomez: But in the meantime we know how these things go: he will end up being acquitted."
"The P2 Lodge, until its dissolution in 1982 due to the Anselmi-Spadolini law, was a regular lodge of the Grand Orient of Italy, as attested by extensive documentation that passed between the grand masters Gamberini, Salvini and Battelli on the one hand and Licio Gelli on the other."
"You get to define what success means to you, and find your own North Star."
"Passion can't be found in your head because it lives in your heart. No matter how hard you try, you cannot figure out your passion by thinking about it. You need to take action and feel your way to your truth, from the inside out."
"As a rule, I always try not to have expectations."
"Deploy introspection and understand what you need in your life."
"It's not about perfection. It's about volume. When you bring volume and consistency on the daily basis, that's where success occurs."
"Set the course by being the captain of your boat."
"In life, business and relationships the key to fulfilment is consistency."
"Financial Accounting is the core of any successful business."
"Achievement is made of sweat and tears, so every single day you need to put in the work, and work as hard as you can!"
"We are never required to be the best, only that we try our best."
"...every human being has an amount of genius in them."
"If you have 1,000 people, you have 1,000 geniuses. They’re just different kinds of genius and a different degree of intensity."
"Man needs dignity even more than he needs bread."
"We have now swapped information for knowledge, which is not the same thing. I do not want to know."
"Mankind is becoming more ethical, but it is not happening because man has decided to become better than he was 100 years ago. It’s because we know we live in a glass house where everybody can see."
"We need a new form of capitalism, a contemporary form of capitalism. I would like to add “humanistic” to that equation."
"Since the very beginning, I have had this dream of living and working for the dignity of mankind."
"We must start from the joy of life, from respect, from humanity, because the most important thing in life is having respect for other people. Especially for those who might think very differently from you."
"Dignity generates responsibility, responsibility generates creativity."
"But with a phone call I can understand your mood, your emotions. With an email I can’t. When speaking I can understand if you have a problem in an instant. I understand your fear. But I can begin to cultivate a hope with you."
"I believe that there are three things in life that you must absolutely do yourself because nobody can do it in your place: keeping fit, following a diet, and accumulating culture."
"I used to always get up at 5 A.M., but now I force myself to stay in bed until 6."
"I have 5,000 books in my home, 1,000 of which I feel are close to my heart. They have always shown me the way. Books are my great passion; I could not live without them."
"If you are a dickhead you will still be a dickhead after tertiary education."
"It is never challenging when you only do one thing in life. It is difficult to do everything, but if you specialise in one thing, you can focus with your head bent over one single thing the whole day and you have less likelihood of getting things wrong."
"I nearly always wear almost the very same things. But I alter the combinations slightly."
"I myself can wear joggers, a good pair of sneakers, then maybe a sweatshirt, and on top of it all, a blazer. That's what makes a difference in luxury terms."
"...there is no accessible luxury. There is no aspirational luxury. It’s either luxury or not luxury."
"While things rest, the world regenerates."
"I started with nothing and built something, and one day it will finish, and something new will come out of it."
"I've always been quite fair in complexion. If I wear green, it does not suit me. It's one of these things in life that I cannot explain. It just is."
"I'm 65; I couldn't just wear a normal suit, a nice shirt and tie. Because I don't want to look that old - I want to look at least 10 years younger."
"So you do need to make a plan for the next three or 30 years, but also the next 300 or 3,000 years."
"In the winter on a Sunday afternoon, I can spend six hours in front of the fireplace, just looking at the flames and thinking. In the evening, I’m drunk with beautiful thoughts. My wife says to me, ‘What are you looking at?’ I say, ‘The fire.’ We have to take a step backward."
"Do you think that during the first five hours of the day you are the same as you are in the last five hours? No way. You’re tired, and if you’re tired, you stop listening, and the decisions you make are risky."
"Our soul needs to be fed on a daily basis too, as much as the body and the mind."
"I like the wind because you can’t buy it."
"Everything is on loan in life—everything."
"I even believe aesthetics are like ethics. Something that is beautiful is ethical, and unethical things aren’t beautiful."
"Doing things without giving the impression of suffering is a question of good manners."
"There is nothing more beautiful than a beautiful woman."
"I am what they call a throttle man. You must not be scared of going too fast."
"In fact, I knew Princess Caroline by eye for two years [before March 1984.] We had mutual friends and I met her at various times during evening parties. Nothing more. At the end of the month of June, we both understood that we wanted to see each other every day, [and] we were invited by mutual friends for a cruise in Corsica, and at the end of this cruise we spent ten days together in Sardinia alone and we returned to Monte Carlo where we never left each other."
"Stefano was a humble guy. He would always step back when the rest of them were having their picture taken. He never forced himself into that world."
"He had confessed that he was a little superstitious, but it was to calm down with the number 3, and "the multiple numbers of 3, 6, 9, 12." He died on October 3, after six years of marriage, the year of his thirty years! He had three children, and the ring he had offered to Caroline had three sapphires, one yellow, a green and a blue!"
"All the mistakes I did in my life, I like to keep them private."
"In Rome they dress very well. In Milan, they dress more bourgeoisly. But the most avant-garde city... is Naples. The Neapolitan underground youth can easily be compared to a city like London."
"Wealth is a wonderful ticket to freedom."
"Intelligent men are not ashamed to bring out their feminine side."
"Il secondo è il primo dei perdenti. (The runner-up is the first of losers.)"
"They are cars which the sporting client can use on the road during the week and race on Sundays."
"His death has deprived us of a great champion - one that I loved very much. My past is scarred with grief; parents, brother, son. My life is full of sad memories. I look back and see the faces of my loved ones, and among them I see him."
"I had deluded myself - as fathers often do - that our attentions would help [Dino] to regain his health. I had convinced myself that [Dino] was like one of my cars, and so I made a table of the calorific values of the various food he had to eat - types of food that would not harm his kidneys - and I kept an up-to-date daily record of his albumins, of the specific gravity of his urine, the level of urea in his blood, of his diuresis, etc., so I would have an indication of the process of the disease. The sad truth was quite different: my son was gradually wasting away with progressive muscular dystrophy. He was dying of that terrible disease which no one has ever been able to understand or cure, and against which there is no defense, aside from genetic prophylaxis (i.e. a medication or a treatment designed and used to prevent a disease from occurring)."
"Among musicians, I had a true friend, Maestro Cantelli. He was a young man of particularly noble sentiments."
"Now, finally, the news is confirmed, the rumors fact. Enzo Ferrari died the evening of August 14, and while that may be trite, it is also true that an era ushers away with him. He was the first, and also the last, of the great autocrats of auto racing. Red cars will continue to be built in the little town near Modena, but other hands, perhaps susceptible to influences beyond a pure love of racing cars, will be in control. For that Ferrari undoubtedly had. Thirty and 40 years ago he began producing road cars, disliking intensely that the majority were ordered by rich dilettantes, people attracted by the kudos of the name, probable incapable of driving a Ferrari properly. There was no Fiat money there in those days, and the road cars were seen as an evil necessary to pay for the racing program. It was an attitude that persisted to the end of the old man's life."
"My heart has always beat a little faster for Ferraris, and there is no distinction in that. Captivation by them is almost irresistible. All that charisma, magic, call it what you will, has plundered the emotions of racing fans as no other cars ever have, or ever will. Paint a race car red, and already you are halfway there. But the rest is less easy to pin down, a hodgepodge of remembered sights and sounds; black on yellow Prancing Horse sheilds on the cockpits of Ascari, Hawthorn, Lauda, Berger; exposed gear lever gates, "PROVA MO" stencil marks. And the mystique, of course, began with the enigma from whom the cars took their name. A man of contradictions, on occasion chillingly ruthless, yet capable of surprising sentimentality."
"Competition among Ferrari drivers was always encouraged. The Ingegnere- he hated being called Commendatore- especially relished chargers in the red cars. Recrimination was always on the cards for a man who settled for a safe second, never for one who had destroyed a car trying to be first."
"Ferrari's love of his cars was an abstract thing. For the actual machinery there was no sentiment whatsoever. Millionaires across the world may devote themselves to collecting Ferraris, but the Old Man hadn't a sliver of interest in what he saw as museum pieces. The future was the thing, and the cars were routinely broken up once their useful purpose had been served. The classic shark-nose cars dominated the 1961 season, for example, but not a single example survives. At any given time, however, his passion for the current cars was the major force in his life."
"Still, the lure of Ferrari was always very real. "When I first went there," Stefan Johansson said, "and saw Mr. Ferrari, I was as nervous as if I'd been meeting royalty. Even if I don't get the drive, I thought at least one of my dreams has been fulfilled." He had that effect on people, this immaculately dressed old man with the ever-present sunglasses. At Ferrari press conferences, we always felt like schoolboys again, waiting for Morning Assembly, and it saddens me deeply to realize we shall not do it again. Racing people across the world will be feeling as I do, now that the greatest of their gods is gone."
"All big projects, every time, they come when you are forced to do something when you are in the corner. Otherwise, if you need to take a decision, you will never take it."
"I am extravagant, but always with a particular piece: perhaps the shoes or the glasses… As the famous Italian actor Vittorio Gassman said: “You can just have one extravagant piece, more is not classy.”"
"Angelo Galasso is a sustainable brand because we don’t use any kind of mass production. All our garments are made exclusively in Italy and in small artisanal workshops. We do extensive background checks to ensure these workshops respect health and safety standards. We also operate a ‘zero-waste policy, we only buy fabrics based on the actual meters we need to maximize efficient production and minimize waste."
"Often, the word utopia is the most convenient way to justify what one has not the will, ability, or courage to do. A dream seems like a dream until one begins to work on it. Only then does it become something infinitely bigger. (Italian: Spesso il termine utopia è la maniera più comoda per liquidare quello che non si ha voglia, capacità o coraggio di fare. Un sogno sembra un sogno fino a quando non si comincia a lavorarci. E allora può diventare qualcosa di infinitamente più grande.)"
"A dream seems like a dream until you start working on it. And then it can become something infinitely greater. (Italian: Un sogno sembra un sogno fino a quando non si comincia a lavorarci. E allora può diventare qualcosa di infinitamente più grande.)"
"The fathers of the Church forbade the Hindus under terrible penalties the use of their own sacred books, and prevented them from all exercise of their religion. They destroyed their temples, and so harassed and interfered with the people that they abandoned the city in large numbers, refusing to remain any longer in a place where they had no liberty, and were liable to imprisonment, torture and death if they worshipped after their own fashion the gods of their fathers."
"Imagine an onion. The center is the people. The layer outside is the product. The external layer is the process. The process makes sense when you have a product, and it's only through the motivation of the people that you make a product. This is the way I see the company. And if you see the company this way, you have to start with the people."
"Strategy isn't something you define once and follow forever. It’s like a white line on the road: you keep adjusting."
"When you change the culture of a company, it's never a revolution. It's an evolution."
"“Public services are needed but must change.”"
"“It must no longer indulge in sensationalism and ‘TV of pain’.”"
"“For Rai there is a risk of Big Brother via Google, YouTube, Facebook.”"
"“Spreading the culture of quality is the first calling card of public service…”"
"“I don’t much like how she is portrayed. I love the normal woman. With her capacities, skills and professionalism that can and must emerge. One should not focus exclusively on beauty.”"
"“The best way to fight the mafia is knowledge.”"