Politicians from Italy

"In quella parte del libro de la mia memoria, dinanzi a la quale poco si potrebbe leggere, si trova una rubrica, la quale dice: Incipit vita nova."

"Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi."

"ne le braccia avea madonna involta in un drappo dormendo. Poi la svegliava, e d'esto core ardendo lei paventosa umilmente pascea: appresso gir lo ne vedea piangendo."

"Ella è quanto de ben pò far natura; per essemplo di lei bieltà si prova."

"Amore e 'l cor gentil sono una cosa... e così esser l'un sanza l'altro osa com'alma razional sanza ragione."

"Sì lungiamente m'ha tenuto Amore e costumato a la sua segnoria"

"Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona de la mia donna disiosamente... che lo 'ntelletto sovr'esse disvia."

"La moralitade è bellezza de la filosofia."

"Nam in omni actione principaliter intenditur ab agente, sive necessitate naturae, sive voluntarie agat, propriam similitudinem explicare, unde fit, quod omne agens, in quantum huiusmodi, delectatur; quia, quum omne quod est appetat suum esse, ac in agendo agentis esse quodammodo amplietur, sequiturde necessitate delectatio... Nihil igitur agit, nisi tale existens, quale patiens fieri debet..."

"Hiis visis, manifestum est quod duplex oportet esse subiectum circa quod currant alterni sensus. Et ideo videndum est de subiecto huius operis, prout ad litteram accipitur; deinde de subiecto, prout allegorice sententiatur. Est ergo subiectum totius operis, litteraliter tantum accepti, status animarum post mortem simpliciter sumptus. Nam de illo et circa illum totius operis versatur processus. Si vero accipiatur opus allegorice, subiectum est homo, prout merendo et demerendo per arbitrii libertatem iustitie premiandi et puniendi obnoxius est."

"Genus vero philosophie, sub quo hic in toto et parte proceditur, est morale negotium, sive ethica; quia non ad speculandum, sed ad opus inventum est totum et pars."

"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita."

"Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate."

"E 'n la sua volontade è nostra pace."

"Nel suo profondo vidi che s'interna, legato con amore in un volume, ciò che per l'universo si squaderna."

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality."

"And you, beloved children, whose lot it is to promote learning under the magisterium of the Church, continue as you are doing to love and tend the noble poet whom We do not hesitate to call the most eloquent singer of the Christian idea."

"Dante's relationship with women is very complex, because the range of real women in Dante's life and in Dante Alighieri's imagined life is very different. There is an idealization of women that occurs when he is nine years old. He lost his real mother when he was five years old, so he is the son of a father and a stepmother. The neighbors of the Portinari family had six daughters and one of these is Beatrice, a nine-year-old girl, his age. Dante meets her gaze and from that moment he becomes almost a prisoner of that gaze, which is why nine is Beatrice's magic number, because he meets her at nine years old. The Poet follows her to Florence for another nine years, without ever receiving encouragement from her, until at eighteen, before entering the church where the girl goes every evening in Santa Margherita dei Cerchi which is the Portinari church, suddenly she decides to stop, look at him, smile at him, and says "I greet you" which is the only phrase Dante will hear from Beatrice. Dante remains completely satisfied by this smile and considers it the sealing of a relationship that has had no other type of concretization, nothing else, just this look and this greeting. He tells this story in this wonderful diary which is the Vita Nova, a set of poems and prose writings that he wrote in the aftermath of Beatrice's death."

"Christianity has an admirable example of the natural union between faith and freedom in Dante Alighieri. Precisely his undoubted adherence to Catholic truth allows and illuminates his perfect autonomy of judgement, free from any fear or human conditioning. Dante is not afraid to criticize the work of the popes and their operational choices, to the point of placing several of them in the depths of hell. But in him "the reverence of the supreme keys" never diminishes and never diminishes in the slightest (Inf. XIX, 101). When it comes to expressing reservations or criticisms that he considers due, there are no discounts neither for lay people, nor for ecclesiastics, nor for monarchs, nor for ordinary citizens... all of whom are required, without exception, to abide by the law evangelical."

"Dante does not come before us as a large catholic mind; rather as a narrow, and even sectarian mind: it is partly the fruit of his age and position, but partly too of his own nature. His greatness has, in all senses, concentred itself into fiery emphasis and depth. He is world-great not because he is world-wide, but because he is world-deep. Through all objects he pierces as it were down into the heart of Being. I know nothing so intense as Dante."

"Redeth the grete poete of Itaille, That highte Dant, for he can al devyse Fro point to point, nat o word wol he faille."

"I wanted my illustrations for the Dante to be like the faint markings of moisture in a divine cheese. This explains their variegated aspect of butterflies' wings. Mysticism is cheese; Christ is cheese, better still, mountains of cheese!"

"Gilson criticizes attempts to trace Dante's position back to Thomism or Averroism. For St. Thomas, every hierarchy of dignity is at the same time a hierarchy of jurisdiction, while for Dante—except for God—a hierarchy of dignity is never the foundation of a hierarchy of jurisdiction, and this corresponds to Dante's specific philosophical problem, which is not so much to define the essence of philosophy as to determine functions and jurisdictions. The principle governing this determination is absolutely irreconcilable with Thomism. St. Thomas knows only one ultimate end: eternal bliss, which can only be attained through the Church; moreover, the spirituality of the ultimate end implies that between temporal and spiritual power there is a hierarchical subordination of the means to the end. For Dante, on the other hand, man can obtain, through the exercise of political virtues, a human happiness completely distinct from heavenly bliss, even if the latter represents a higher end. The thesis of the “duo ultima” legitimizes the complete distinction between the political order and the religious order, which is equally universal to that of the Church, but autonomous and pursuing an end of earthly happiness."

"For us Anishinaabe, Biskaabiiyang is a specific term that means “returning to the woods,” because we’re woodland peoples. For example, I grew up growing my “three sisters”—that is, corn, beans, and squash—along the edge of the forest, using what people now call sylvan culture or permaculture. It’s curious how this counters the perspective of classical authors like Dante in early modern Europe or, later, Edmund Spenser, an important Renaissance poet, who view the woods as this terrifying presence. Why is this decolonizing? Because through boarding schools and many other colonial experiences, that fear of the woods creeps in."

"Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third."

"Dante as a poet performs miracles in some of the openings of his lyrics or some of his verses in the Commedia. In an age of convention and formalism he went to Virgil to school; in an age when nothing gave reason to hope for the appearance of a masterpiece of form and structure, he produced such a masterpiece. His creative work is immensely superior in merit to his theorizing, but even these show how, in spite of the limitations of contemporary philosophy and rhetoric he was able to slip through the meshes of the network which encircled him, and to bring the vernacular poetry of Italy, when it was still in its infancy, to heights of perfection and finish that have seldom been equalled and never surpassed."

"I would like to add my voice to those who consider Dante Alighieri an artist of the greatest universal esteem, who through his immortal works still has much to say and offer to those who desire to travel the way to true knowledge, to the authentic discovery of self, of the world, of life's profound and transcendent meaning. ... The Comedy can be read as a great itinerary, rather as a true pilgrimage, both personal and interior, as well as communal, ecclesial, social and historic. ... Dante is...a prophet of hope, a herald of humanity's possible redemption and liberation, of profound change in every man and woman, of all of humanity."

"Dante was the first to sing of heaven and of hell, not as the dreams of mythological fiction, but as the objects of a real faith. He was the first who lanched from this promontory on which we stand, into the vast immensity of the universe, traversed the abyss amidst demons and infernal tortures, and mounting afterwards through angelic hosts and undiscovered worlds, gazed with stedfast eye upon the glories of the Highest... Dante was the Columbus who discovered this new world of poesy... Dante probably surpassed even Homer himself."

"Dante's corpus as a whole is in certain respects like a testament to the closing medieval age; it shows what the Western world would have been had it not broken from its tradition."

"If instilling the fear of hell is a form of “child abuse” perhaps Dante’s “Comedy,” with its graphic depictions of hell, should be forbidden to minors in Japan, and Japanese travel agents should not take families with minors to the famous Medieval Cemetery of or to countless European cathedrals whose frescos or paintings show how devils will torment the sinners in the afterlife (Buddhist depictions of are not less terrifying, by the way)."

"I love Dante almost as much as the Bible. He is my spiritual food, the rest is ballast."

"Dante has not deigned to take his inspiration from any other. He has wished to be himself, himself alone; in a word, to create. He has occupied a vast space, and has filled it with the superiority of a sublime mind. He is diverse, strong, and gracious. He has imagination, warmth, and enthusiasm. He makes his reader tremble, shed tears, feel the thrill of honor in a way that is the height of art. Severe and menacing, he has terrible imprecations for crime, scourgings for vice, sorrow for misfortune. As a citizen, affected by the laws of the republic, he thunders against its oppressors, but he is always ready to excuse his native city. Florence is ever to him his sweet, beloved country, dear to his heart. I am envious for my dear France, that she has never produced a rival to Dante; that this Colossus has not had his equal among us. No, there is no reputation which can be compared to his."

"Time in culture is capable of many arrangements. Dante read today sets up different relations, very likely, from Dante read in his own decades, but the change is not in Dante nor in his truth, although many will say so. These truths, the truth of the voyage, of the skull-grinding horror, the white chance, leopard, star, and belief, are present. There is no particular question of death, since we are in a life where imaginative experience is given and taken."

"In The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the Seventh Circle of Hell for people who charged usurious interest rates. Today we don't need the hellfire, the pitchforks, or the rivers of boiling blood, but we do need a national usury law that caps interest rates on credit cards and consumer loans at 15 percent."

"His very words are instinct with spirit; each is as a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable thought; and many yet lie covered in the ashes of their birth, and pregnant with the lightning which has yet found no conductor."

"That great genius conceived, in his vast imagination, the mysteries of the invisible creation, and unveiled them to the eyes of the astonished world."

"Dante Alighieri wrote in the fourteenth century that the spirit of poetry abounds "in the tangled constructions and defective pronunciations" of vernacular speech where language is renewed and transformed. His vision resonates today with the faulty speech of migrants creating the sounds and intonations of the future."

"Sa réputation s'affermira toujours, parce qu'on ne le lit guère. II y a de lui une vingtaine de traits qu'on sait par cœur: cela suffit pour s'épargner la peine d'examiner le reste."

"Dante's Inferno was the first book to give me a real thrill. I thought Doré's drawings in it remarkable, and I became exceedingly curious about his work."

"To tell the truth, to arrive together at the truth, is a communist and revolutionary act."

"History teaches, but it has no pupils."

"The history of education shows that every class which has sought to take power has prepared itself for power by an autonomous education. The first step in emancipating oneself from political and social slavery is that of freeing the mind. I put forward this new idea: popular schooling should be placed under the control of the great workers’ unions. The problem of education is the most important class problem."

"It is all a matter of comparing one’s own life with something worse and consoling oneself with the relativity of human fortunes. When I was eight or nine I had an experience which came clearly to mind when I read your advice. I used to know a family in a little village near mine: father, mother and sons: they were small landowners and had an inn. Very energetic people, especially the woman. I knew (I had heard) that besides the sons we knew, this woman had another son nobody had seen, who was spoken of in whispers, as if he were a great disgrace for the mother, an idiot, a monster or worse. I remember that my mother referred to this woman often as a martyr, who made great sacrifices for this son, and put up with great sorrows. One Sunday morning about ten, I was sent to this woman’s: I had to deliver some crocheting and get the money. I found her shutting the door, dressed up to go out to mass, she had a hamper under her arm. On seeing me she hesitated then decided. She told me to accompany her to a certain place, and that she would take delivery and give me the money on our return. She took me out of the village, into an orchard filled with rubbish and plaster; in one corner there was a sort of pig sty, about four feet high, and windowless, with only a strong door. She opened the door and I could hear an animal-like howling. Inside was her son, a robust boy of 18, who couldn’t stand up and hence scraped along on his seat to the door, as far as he was permitted to move by a chain linked to his waist and attached to the ring in the wall. He was covered with filth, and his eyes shone red, like those of a nocturnal animal. His mother dumped the contents of her basket – a mixed mess of household leftovers – into a stone trough. She filled another trough with water, and we left. I said nothing to my mother about what I had seen, so great an impression it had made on me, and so convinced was I that nobody would believe me. Nor when I later heard of the misery which had befallen that poor mother, did I interrupt to talk of the misery of the poor human wreck who had such a mother."

"When I was a child the boys of the town never came near me except to make fun of me. I was almost always alone. Sometimes, finding me by chance among them, they hurled themselves against me, and not only with words. One day – and while he told me this his great eyes shone with an inner light - … they started to throw stones at me with more violence than usual, with the evilness which is found among children and the weak. I lost patience, and grabbing stones I too started to defend myself with such energy that my attackers were put to flight. Mario, I succeeded in beating them: I terrified them to such an extent that from that day they respected me and no longer annoyed me. I ran to my mother … and told her of my first victorious battle: she kissed me tenderly and it was the best prize that I could have wanted."

"I can’t think why Delio [son] has not been told that I’m in prison, and why no one reflected that he might then find out about it indirectly, that is, in the most disagreeable way for a child, who then begins to doubt the truthfulness of those educating him, to think about it on his own account and draw apart. At least, that was my experience as a child: I remember it perfectly . . . I believe in treating children as rational creatures with whom it is possible to discuss even the most serious matters. This makes a very profound impression on them, it strengthens their character and above all it avoids leaving their development at the mercy of random environmental pressures and casual, impersonal encounters. It really is very strange how grown-ups forget they were children themselves, and make no use of their own experiences. For my part, I recall vividly how offended I was at every discovery of a subterfuge, even if it was meant to keep painful facts from me, and how this shut me up within myself and made me withdraw."

"For two years I have lived outside the world: in a dream world. One by one, I let each strand tying me to the world and to my fellow men be cut. I live entirely for the mind, for the heart not at all …. I turned myself into a bear, inside and outside … other people did not exist for me. For perhaps two years, I didn’t laugh once and I didn’t cry … but I never hurt anyone but myself."

"I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will."

"La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi piú svariati."

"My practicality consists in this: in the knowledge that if you beat your head against the wall it is your head which breaks and not the wall … that is my strength, my only strength."

"All men are intellectuals: but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals."

"Economy and ideology. The claim (presented as an essential postulate of historical materialism) that every fluctuation of politics and ideology can be presented and expounded as an immediate expression of the structure, must be contested in theory as primitive infantilism, and combated in practice with the authentic testimony of Marx, the author of concrete political and historical works."

"History is at once freedom and necessity."

"We can see that in putting the question "what is man?" what we mean is: what can man become? That is, can man dominate his own destiny, can he "make himself," can he create his own life? We maintain therefore that man is a process and, more exactly, the process of his actions. If you think about it, the question itself "what is man?" is not an abstract or "objective" question. It is born of our reflection about ourselves and about others, and we want to know, in relation to what we have thought and seen, what we are and what we can become; whether we really are, and if so to what extent, "makers of our own selves," of our life and of our destiny. And we want to know this "today," in the given conditions of today, the conditions of our daily life, not of any life or any man"

"Revolutionaries see history as a creation of their own spirit, as being made up of a continuous series of violent tugs at the other forces of society - both active and passive, and they prepare the maximum of favourable conditions for the definitive tug (revolution)."

"Every social stratum has its own "common sense" which is ultimately the most widespread conception of life and morals. Every philosophical current leaves a sedimentation of "common sense": this is the document of its historical reality. Common sense is not something rigid and static; rather, it changes continuously, enriched by scientific notions and philosophical opinions which have entered common usage. "Common sense" is the folklore of philosophy and stands midway between "folklore" proper (that is, as it is understood) and the philosophy, the science, the economics of the scholars. "Common sense" creates the folklore of the future, that is a more or less rigidified phase of popular knowledge a certain time and place."

"To tell the truth is revolutionary."

"The long march through the institutions."

"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters."

"The international disputes which united and divided Luxemburg, Lenin, Lukács, Gramsci, Bordiga or Trotsky on these issues represent the last great strategic debate in the European workers’ movement. Since then, there has been little significant theoretical development of the political problems of revolutionary strategy in metropolitan capitalism that has had any direct contact with the masses. The structural divorce between original Marxist theory and the main organizations of the working class in Europe has yet to be historically resolved. The May-June revolt in France, the upheaval in Portugal, the approaching dénouement in Spain, presage the end of this long divorce, but have not accomplished it. The classical debates, therefore, still remain in many respects the most advanced limit of reference we possess today. It is thus not mere archaism to recall the strategic confrontations which occurred four or five decades ago. To reappropriate them, on the contrary, is a step towards a Marxist discussion that has the—necessarily modest—hope of assuming an ‘initial shape’ of correct theory today. Régis Debray has spoken, in a famous paragraph, of the constant difficulty of being contemporary with our present. In Europe at least, we have yet to be sufficiently contemporary with our past."

"We must prevent this brain from functioning for twenty years."

"oftentimes prison writing is described as that which is produced in prison or by prisoners, and certainly Gramsci's prison notebooks provide the most interesting example."

"I always think of a line from Gramsci, "living in the interregnum.""

"Gramsci deviated from the Marxist belief that the inherent contradictions of capitalism would of themselves usher in socialism. He was opposed to the iron control of a Leninist revolutionary vanguard. Revolution, he wrote, would only be achieved when the masses had gained enough consciousness to exert personal autonomy and see through the mores, stereotypes and narratives disseminated by the dominant culture. Revolutionary change required the intellectual ability to understand reality."

"Antonio Gramsci wisely wrote: "When a politician puts pressure on the art of his time to express a particular cultural world, his activity is one of politics, not of artistic criticism. If the cultural world for which one is fighting is a living and necessary fact, its expansiveness will be irresistible and it will find its artists.""

"Antonio Gramsci wrote of the culture of the future that "new" individual artists can't be manufactured: art is a part of society-but that to imagine a new socialist society is to imagine a new kind of art that we can't foresee from where we now stand. "One must speak," Gramsci wrote, "of a struggle for a new culture, that is, for a new moral life that cannot but be intimately connected to a new intuition of life, until it becomes a new way of feeling and seeing reality and, therefore, a world intimately ingrained in 'possible artists' and 'possible works of art.""

"Christianity is at the very root of the evil that has corrupted the West. This is the truth, and it admits no doubt."

"We cannot ask ourselves whether ‘woman’ is superior or inferior to ‘man’ any more than we can ask ourselves whether water is superior or inferior to fire. There can be no doubt that a woman who is perfectly woman is superior to a man who is imperfectly man, just as a farmer who is faithful to his land and performs his work perfectly is superior to a king who cannot do his own work."

"All too often people forget that spirituality is essentially a way of life and that its measure does not consist of notions, theories, and ideas that have been stored in one’s head. Spirituality is actually what has been successfully actualized and translated into a sense of superiority which is experienced inside by the soul, and a noble demeanor, which is expressed in the body."

"Be radical, have principles, be absolute, be that which the bourgeoisie calls an extremist: give yourself without counting or calculating, don't accept what they call ‘the reality of life' and act in such a way that you won't be accepted by that kind of ‘life', never abandon the principle of struggle."

"To fight on "the path of God" has been characterized as "medieval" fanaticism; conversely, it has been characterized as a most sacred cause to fight for "patriotic" and "nationalistic" ideals and for other myths that in our contemporary era have eventually been unmasked and shown to be the instruments of irrational, materialistic, and destructive forces... Soldiers went to the front to experience war as something else, namely, as a crisis that all too often did not turn out to be an authentic and heroic transfiguration of the personality, but rather the regression of the individual to a plane of savage instincts, "reflexes," and reactions that retain very little of the human..."

"Within a nominally Christian world, chivalry upheld without any substantial alterations an Aryan ethics in the following things: (1) upholding the ideal of the hero rather than the saint, and of the conqueror rather than of the martyr; (2) regarding faithfulness and honor, rather than caritas and humbleness, as the highest virtues; (3) regarding cowardice and dishonor, rather than sin, as the worst possible evil; (4) ignoring or hardly putting into practice the evangelical precepts of not opposing evil and not retaliating against offenses, but rather, methodically punishing unfairness and evil; (5) excluding from its ranks those who followed the Christian precept ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ to the letter; and (6) refusing to love one’s enemy and instead fighting him and being magnanimous only after defeating him."

"In reality, chivalry was animated by the impulse toward a ‘traditional’ restoration in the highest sense of the word, with the silent or explicit overcoming of the Christian religious spirit."

"Knighthood, instead, appeared as a superterritorial and supernational community in which its members, who were consecrated to military priesthood, no longer had a homeland and thus were bound by faithfulness not to people but, on the one hand, to an ethics that had as its fundamental values honor, truth, courage, and loyalty and, on the other hand, to a spiritual authority of a universal type, which was essentially that of the Empire."

"A political, economic, and social order created merely for the sake of temporal life is exclusively characteristic of the modern world, that is, of the antitraditional world."

"One of the commonplaces of modern historiography is the polemical exaltation of the civilization of the Renaissance over and against medieval civilization. This is not just the expression of a typical misunderstanding, since this mentality is the effect of one among the innumerable deceptions purposely spread in modern culture by the leaders of global subversion. The truth is that after the collapse of the ancient world, if there ever was a civilization that deserves the name of Renaissance, this was the civilization of the Middle Ages. In its objectivity, its virile spirit, its hierarchical structure, its proud antihumanistic simplicity so often permeated by the sense of the sacred, the Middle Ages represented a return to the origins."

"The blood of the heroes is closer to God than the ink of the philosophers and the prayers of the faithful."

"The best and most authentic reaction against feminism and against every other female aberration should not be aimed at women as such, but at men instead. It should not be expected of women that they return to what they really are and thus reestablish the necessary inner and outer conditions for a reintegration of a superior race, when men themselves retain only the semblance of true virility."

"The Americans' "open-mindedness", which is sometimes cited in their favor, is the other side of their interior formlessness. The same goes for their "individualism". Individualism and personality are not the same: the one belongs to the formless world of quantity, the other to the world of quality and hierarchy. The Americans are the living refutation of the Cartesian axiom, "I think, therefore I am": Americans do not think, yet they are. The American "mind", puerile and primitive, lacks characteristic form and is therefore open to every kind of standardization."

"In a superior civilization, as, for example, that of the Indo-Aryans, the being who is without a characteristic form or caste (in the original meaning of the word), not even that of servant or shudra, would emerge as a pariah. In this respect America is a society of pariahs. There is a role for pariahs. It is to be subjected to beings whose form and internal laws are precisely defined. Instead the modern pariahs seek to become dominant themselves and to exercise their dominion over the entire world."

"There is a necessary correspondence between the most advanced stages of a historical cycle and the most primitive. America is the final stage of modern Europe. Guénon called the United States "the far West", in the novel sense that the United States represents the reductio ad absurdum of the negative and the most senile aspects of Western civilization. What in Europe exist in diluted form are magnified and concentrated in the United States whereby they are revealed as the symptoms of disintegration and cultural and human regression. The American mentality can only be interpreted as an example of regression, which shows itself in the mental atrophy towards all higher interests and incomprehension of higher sensibility. The American mind has limited horizons, one conscribed to everything which is immediate and simplistic, with the inevitable consequence that everything is made banal, basic and leveled down until it is deprived of all spiritual life. Life itself in American terms is entirely mechanistic. The sense of "I" in America belongs entirely to the physical level of existence. The typical American neither has spiritual dilemmas nor complications: he is a "natural" joiner and conformist."

"The occult war is a battle that is waged imperceptibly by the forces of global subversion, with means and in circumstances ignored by current historiography. The notion of occult war belongs to a three-dimensional view of history: this view does not regard as essential the two superficial dimensions of time and space (which include causes, facts, and visible leaders) but rather emphasizes the dimension of depth, or the "subterranean" dimension in which forces and influences often act in a decisive manner, and which, more often not than not, cannot be reduced to what is merely human, whether at an individual or a collective level”"

"As a social bond, now one does not find even a faith of the warrior kind, that is, relationships of loyalty and honour. The social bond assumes a utilitarian and economic character; it is an agreement based on convenience and material interest — a type only a merchant would accept."

"There is no correlation between material and spiritual misery. Only to the lowest and dullest levels of society can one preach the formula for all human happiness and wholeness as the well-named "animal ideal," a well-being that is little better than bovine. Hegel rightly wrote that the epochs of material well-being are blank pages in the history book, and Toynbee has shown that the challenge to mankind of environmentally and spiritually harsh and problematic conditions is often the incentive that awakens the creative energies of civilization. In some cases, it is not paradoxical to say that the man of good will should try to make life difficult for his neighbor! It is a commonplace that all the higher virtues attenuate and atrophy under easy conditions, when man is not forced to prove himself in some way; and in the final analysis it does not matter in such situations if a good number fall away and are lost through natural selection."

"Although our case is different from that of ascetics who remove themselves from the world, the situation of the latest technological civilization might offer the incentive for commitments of this kind. In a large city, in mass society, among the almost unreal swarming of faceless beings, an essential sense of isolation or of detachment often occurs naturally, perhaps even more than in the solitude of moors and mountains."

"It is a cliché that the modern scientific vision has desacralized the world, and the world desacralized by scientific knowledge has become one of the existential elements that make up modern man, all the more so to the degree that he is "civilized." Ever since he has been subject to compulsory education, his mind has been stuffed with "positive" scientific notions; he cannot avoid seeing in a soulless light everything that surrounds him, and therefore acts destructively. What, for example, could the symbol of the sunset of a dynasty, like the Japanese, mean to him when he knows scientifically what the sun is: merely a star, at which one can even fire missiles."

"I truly cannot say what the person who still has hope for man should think of the imminence of quasi-apocalyptic destruction. It would certainly force many to face the existential problem in all its nakedness, and subject them to extreme trials; but is this a worse evil than that of mankind's safe, secure, satisfied, and total consignment to the kind of happiness that befits Nietzsche's "last man": a comfortable consumer civilization of socialized human animals, aided by all the discoveries of science and industry and reproducing demographically in a squirming, catastrophic crescendo?"

"For a long time there have been no true sovereigns, monarchs by divine right capable of wielding sword and scepter, and symbols of a higher human ideal. More than a century ago, Juan Donoso Cortés stated that no kings existed capable of proclaiming themselves as such except "by the will of the nation," adding that, even if any had existed, they would not have been recognized. The few monarchies still surviving are notoriously impotent and empty, while the traditional nobility has lost its essential character as a political class and any existential prestige and rank along with it. Its current representatives may still interest our contemporaries when put on the same plane as film actors and actresses, sport heroes and opera stars, and when through some private, sentimental, or scandalous chance, they serve as fodder for magazine articles."

"The essence of nationalistic ideology is to hold homeland and nation as supreme values, conceiving them as mystical entities almost with a life of their own and having an absolute claim on the individual; whereas, in reality, they are only dissociated and formless realities, by way of their negation of any true hierarchical principle, and of any symbol or warrant of a transcendent authority. In general, the foundation of political unities that have taken form in this direction is antithetical to the traditional state. In fact, as I have said, the cement of the latter was a loyalty and fidelity that could dispense with the naturalistic fact of nationality; it was a principle of order and sovereignty that, by not being based on this fact, could even be valid in areas including more than one nationality. It was the dignities, particular rights, and castes that united or divided individuals "vertically," beyond the "horizontal" common denominator of "nation" and "homeland." In a word, it was unification from above, not from below."

"We have to face the consequences of the fact that the family has long since ceased to have any higher meaning, or been cemented by living forces that go beyond the merely individual. The organic and, to a certain degree, "heroic" character that its unity presented in the past has been lost in the modern world, just as the institution's residual veneer of "sacrality" bestowed by religious marriage has disappeared, or nearly so. In reality, in the great majority of cases the modern family is presented as a petit bourgeois institution determined almost exclusively by conformist, utilitarian, primitive, or at best sentimental factors. Above all, its essential fulcrum has disappeared, which was constituted by the primarily spiritual authority of its head, the father: that is shown by the etymological meaning of the word pater as "lord," or "sovereign." […] How could the family continue to have a firm, binding center, if its natural head, the father, is so often estranged from it today—even physically, when the practical mechanism of material life takes him away from it? What authority can the father have, especially in the so-called upper classes, if he is reduced to a money-making machine, a busy professional, and the like?"

"Not being able to ban sexuality altogether, Catholicism has tried to reduce it to a mere biological fact, allowing its use in marriage only for procreation. Unlike certain ancient traditions, Catholicism has recognized no higher value, not even a potential one, in the sexual experience taken in itself. There is lacking any basis for its transformation in the interests of a more intense life, to integrate and elevate the inner tension of two beings of different sexes, whereas it is in exactly these terms that one should conceive of a concrete "sacralization" of the union and the effect of a higher influence involved in the rite."

"Vilfredo Pareto spoke of a "sexual religion" that in the nineteenth century, with its taboos, dogmas, and intolerance, accompanied religion as usually understood. It was particularly virulent in Anglo-Saxon countries, where it had, and in part still has as its worthy companions, two other brand-new, dogmatic, secular religions: humanitarian progressivism and the religion of democracy. […] It is known that virtus in antiquity and even during the Renaissance had the meaning of a force of the soul, of virile quality, of power, while later its prevalent meaning became sexual, so much that Pareto could coin the term "virtuism" itself to characterize the said puritanical religion. […] I have already indicated the principles of a "greater morality" that, being dependent on a kind of interior race, cannot be damaged by nihilistic dissolutions: these include truth, justice, loyalty, inner courage, the authentic, socially unconditioned sentiment of honor and shame, control over oneself. These are what are meant by "virtue"; sexual acts have no part in it except indirectly, and only when they lead to a behavior that deviates from these values."

"As for Hitler, he nourished a fundamental aversion to the monarchy and, as we have noted, his polemic against the Habsburgs, for instance, was of an unparalleled vulgarity. For Hitler, the Volk alone was the principle of legitimacy. He was established as its direct representative and guide, without intermediaries, and it was to follow him unconditionally. No higher princple existed or was tolerated by him. Therefore it is perfectly correct to speak of a consolidated populist dictatorship employing the tools of a single party and the myth of the Volk. Not only the ancient German traditions, but also the very concept of Reich and, as we shall see, the concept of race were brought by Hitler to the level of the masses, which implied their degradation and distorition. Still, in this context they became tools of great power."

"Prussia had been the creation of a dynasty that had the nobility, the army and the higher bureaucracy for its backbone. The primary element was not the 'nation' or the Volk. Rather the state, more than the land or the ethnos, constituted the real foundation and unifying principle. There was none of that in Hitlerism."

"The presence of a proletarian aspect in Nazism is undeniable, as in the figure of Hitler himself, who had none of the traits of a 'gentleman,' of an aristocratic type di razza. This proletarian aspect and even vulgarity of National Socialism was often noticed, especially in Austria after its annexation to the Reich and after the phase of a rash 'national' infatuation of Austrians for 'Greater Germany.'"

"Heinrich Himmler's political tendencies were philo-monarchist and Right-wing conservative, inherited from his father who had been the loyalist instructor of Heinrich, hereditary prince of Bavaria. He was especially fascinated by the ideal of the Order of Teutonic Knights, which we spoke of earlier. He wanted to make the SS a corps that would perform the same function of the state's central nucleus that the nobility had played with its unquestioning loyalty to the regime, but in a new form. For the formation of a man of the SS, he considered a blend of Spartan spirit and Prussian discipline. But he also had in view the order of Jesuits (Hitler jokingly used to call Himmler 'my Ignatius of Loyola'). [...]"

"Himmler approved the idea of recruiting divisions of the Waffen-SS with volunteers from all nations under the banner of the struggle against Communist Russia and in defence of Europe and its civilisation. This was the restoration of the function that the Order of Teutonic Knights had in the beginning as guardian of the East and, at the same time, of the spirit that had animated the Freikorps, the voluntary groups that, on their own initiative, had fought against the Bolsheviks in the eastern regions and the Baltic countries after the end of the First World War. In the end, more than seventeen nations were represented in the Waffen-SS, often with their own complete divisions: French, Belgians, Dutch, Scandinavians, Ukrainians, Spaniards, even Swiss, with a total of about 800,000 men, of whom only a part came from the Germanic area. [...]"

"In our opinion, the task of a far-sighted policy of the Third Reich ought to have been that of seeking every possible means to obtain at least the neutrality of the western nations so as to have free hands for a devestating attack exclusively against the Soviet Union—but that would have required the shrewdness and genius of a Metternich."

"The fundamental principle underlying all justifications of war, from the point of view of human personality, is 'heroism'. War, it is said, offers man the opportunity to awaken the hero who sleeps within him. War breaks the routine of comfortable life; by means of its severe ordeals, it offers a transfiguring knowledge of life, life according to death. The moment the individual succeeds in living as a hero, even if it is the final moment of his earthly life, weighs infinitely more on the scale of values than a protracted existence spent consuming monotonously among the trivialities of cities. From a spiritual point of view, these possibilities make up for the negative and destructive tendencies of war, which are one-sidedly and tendentiously highlighted by pacifist materialism. War makes one realise the relativity of human life and therefore also the law of a 'more-than-life', and thus war has always an anti-materialist value, a spiritual value."

"Those who regard the Crusades, with indignation, as among the most extravagant episodes of the 'dark' Middle Ages, have not even the slightest suspicion that what they call 'religious fanaticism' was the visible sign of the presence and effectiveness of a sensitivity and decisiveness, the absence of which is more characteristic of true barbarism. [...] The one who fights according to the sense of 'sacred war' is spontaneously beyond every particularism and exists in a spiritual climate which, at any given moment, may very well give rise and life to a supra-national unity of action. This is precisely what occurred in the Crusades when Princes and Dukes of every land gathered in the heroic and sacred enterprise, regardless of their particular utilitarian interests or political divisions, bringing about for the first time a great European unity, true to the common civilisation and to the very principle of the Sacred Roman Empire."

"The lesser war here corresponds to the exoteric war, the bloody battle which is fought with material arms against the enemy, against the 'barbarian', against an inferior race over whom a superior right is claimed, or, finally, when the event is motivated by a religious justification, against the 'infidel'. No matter how terrible and tragic the events, no matter how huge the destruction, this war, metaphysically, still remains a 'lesser war. The 'greater' or 'holy war' is, contrarily, of the interior and intangible order – it is the war which is fought against the enemy, the 'barbarian', the 'infidel', whom everyone bears in himself, or whom everyone can see arising in himself on every occasion that he tries to subject his whole being to a spiritual law."

"Danger reawakens the spirit."

"The highest instrument of inner awakening of race is combat, and war is its highest expression. That pacifism and humanitarianism are phenomena closely linked to internationalism, democracy, cosmopolitanism and liberalism is perfectly logical – the same anti-racial instinct present in some, is reflected and confirmed in the others. The will towards sub-racial levelling inborn in internationalism finds its ally in pacifist humanitarianism, which has the function of preventing the heroic test from disrupting the game by galvanising the surviving forces of any still not completely deracinated peoples."

"Immortality is the privilege of the few, and, according to the Aryan conception, specifically the privilege of heroes. Continuing to live – not as a shadow, but as a demigod – is reserved to those which a special spiritual action has elevated from the one nature to the other."

"Love for distance and order, the ability to subordinate one's individualistic and passionate element to principles, the ability to take action and work above mere personhood, a feeling of dignity devoid of vanity are features of the true warrior spirit as essential as those which refer to actual combat."

"Warrior spirit is characterised by direct, clear and loyal relations, based on fidelity and honour and a sound instinct for the various dignities, which it can well distinguish: it opposes everything which is impersonal and trivial."

"In dealing with relationships, not only man-to-man, but also State-to-State and race-to-race, it is necessary to be able to conceive again of that obedience which does not humiliate but exalts, that command or leadership which commits one to superiority and a precise responsibility."

"However, what is really required to defend 'the West' against the sudden rise of these barbaric and elemental forces is the strengthening, to an extent perhaps still unknown to Western man, of a heroic vision of life. Apart from the military-technical apparatus the world of the 'Westerners' has at its disposal only a limp and shapeless substance – and the cult of the skin, the myth of 'safety' and of 'war on war', and the ideal of the long, comfortable guaranteed, 'democratic' existence, which is preferred to the ideal of the fulfilment which can be grasped only on the frontiers between life and death in the meeting of the essence of living with the extreme of danger."

"Our Marcuse, only better."

"It is unclear whether "superfascista" [lit. 'superfascist'] meant that Evola was placing himself above or beyond Fascism."

"One of the most respected fascist gurus."

"The ultimate and secret motivation for Evola’s theories and plans must be sought in a revolt of the old aristocracy against today’s world, which is totally alienated from the upper class. This confirms the initial German impression: that we are dealing with a ”reactionary Roman” […] His political plans for a Roman-Germanic Imperium are of a utopian character, and moreover apt to cause ideological confusions. Since Evola is also only tolerated and barely supported by Fascism, it is tactically not necessary to accommodate his tendencies from our side."

"Nobody can ask us to abjure our fascist roots."

"Mussolini was the greatest political leader of the century."

"I think the Mussolinean institution of a third way alternative to communism is currently still very relevant."

"If you ask me:"An openly homosexual teacher can work as a teacher? I say no. (...) I'll not do anything to discriminate you, but I'll also not do anything to put your type of relationship on the same level of the natural family."

"After 1994, we did many things. We had Fiuggi, there was a confrontation. I'd say that today one cannot say it for sure. Today, I would not say it again [that Mussolini was the greatest political leader of the century.]"

"Times are ripe to discuss about the vote right, at least on an administrative level, for immigrant persons."

"Fascism was part of the absolute evil. (...) We have to denounce the ashaming pages in the history of our past. (...) There included all the pages related to the discrimination and the persecution of jews and, more in general, of minoritires. And therefore that one [The Italian Social Republic of Salò] is also included."

"Communism has been the greatest and bloodiest illusion that humanity ever bore"

"If we look at Somalia, Ethiopia and Lybia, to how they're reduced now, and to how they were before, with Italy, I think that this page of history will be rewritten and there will be a positive evaluation of the role of Italy"

"If there are rights or duties of people which are not guaranteed because they're part of a [de facto] union and not of a family, there will be the need of a legislative action to remove the disparity. Obviously, when talking about people I refer to everyone [including homosexuals]."

"Waiting for the implosion [of the government of Romano Prodi] is risking to turn into Waiting for Godot."

"I don't think that the United States are ready for a presidency as the one of Obama, at least because he would be the first black president."

"Resistants were on the right side, Salò Republic's combatants on the wrong one. (...) One cannot equate who was fighting for a right cause of equality and freedom, and who, apart of goodfaith, was on the wrong side. (...) The judgement of the Right [on Fascism] have to be negative, due to freedom limitation. (...) We cannot deny ourselves history, and Fascism was a dictatorship that denied some fundamental freedoms."

"The accession of Turkey [in the European Union] would be a sign of the full compatibility of Islam with democracy."

"[On Mussolini as the greatest political leader of the century] The answer is in the things I've done in the last years. I don't think the same anymore, I would be schyzophrenic."

"I didn't believe that Giorgia Meloni could recompose a political community that had also been human: I was wrong, she has built a small authentic masterpiece, if today the right wing is the governing right wing, it is due to that political intuition to restore political dignity to the right wing."

"Very often I receive raccomandazioni for young Fascists or officers or, even worse, persons who do not belong to the organization, with requests that I do something for them in competitive examinations."

"He is a God."

"It is absurd to believe in the possibility of perpetual peace...Fascist education must be education for battle. Fascism believes in sanctity and heroism."

"Our so-called Society people, instead of going in for sport, persist in holding conversations in their drawing rooms, generally in a foreign tongue. They engage nurse maids, personal maids and governesses of all nationalities except Italian. They play poker and bridge with the accompanying drinks, certainly not Italian brands!"

"Nothing irritates us Fascists] so much as to be taken for pillars of order. Nothing so exasperates us as the people who come to us through fear of Communism. Those good people [who are fearful of all social change] will have to realize, and we shall soon make them realize, that the weight of the social problem is now on our shoulders and that they would be wiser to fear us than to fear Communism."

"He will be immediately avenged!"

"Only the Duce must give them orders, have you forgotten that? You have forgotten finally too much. How disgusting."

"Churchill must not forget that the Italians have nothing more to lose and they possess a courage of despair."

"All those traitors who were morally against fascism during the shameful forty-five days following July 25 must inexorably be wiped out."

"Lo squadrismo è stato la primavera della nostra vita, e chi è stato squadrista una volta lo è per sempre."

"Vita sei nostra amica, morte sei nostra amante."

"Aut Caesar, aut nihil."

"Your brother, Cesar de Borgia, Elect of Valencia"

"However much Rome may be in the habit of speaking and writing, for my own part, I shall give these libellers a lesson in good manners."

"To all our Lieutenants, Castellains, Captains, Condottieri, Officers, Soldiers and Subjects, to whom these presents may be known, we commit and command that to our Most Excellent and Most Beloved Private Architect and General Engineer Leonardo Vinci, bearer of the same, and who has our Commission to survey the holds and fortresses of our States, in order that according to their exigencies and his judgment we may equip them, they are to give free pass, exempt from all public toll to himself and his company, and friendly reception; and to allow him to see, measure and estimate all he may wish. And to this effect they shall order men on his requisition and lend him all the help, assistance and favours he may request, it being our wish that for all works to be done in our Dominions any engineer be compelled to consult him and to conform to his opinion ; and to this may none presume to act in opposition, if it be his pleasure not to incur our indignation."

"Most Illustrious and most Excellent Lady, our very dear Sister,- Confident of the circumstance that there can be no more efficacious and salutary medicine for the indisposition from which you are at present suffering than the announcement of good and happy news, we advise you that at this very moment we have received sure tidings of the capture of Camerino. We beg that you will do honour to this message by an immediate improvement, and inform us of it, because, tormented as we are to know you so ill, nothing, not even this felicitous event, can suffice to afford us pleasure. We beg you also kindly to convey the present to the Illustrious Lord Don Alfonso, your husband and our beloved Brother-in-law, to whom we are not writing to-day."

"A matter which would be easily accomplished, as the best men of that State have already offered themselves to me."

"[I] had not forgotten the way to reconquer it [Urbino]."

"The constellations this year seem unfavourable to rebels.""

"Diet of bankrupts... To-day, Messer Paolo is to visit me, and to-morrow there will be the cardinal; and thus they think to befool me, at their pleasure. But I, on my side, am only dallying with them. I listen to all they have to say and bide my own time."

"senza segno d'alterazione alcuna"

"Without any sign of alteration."

"There is no city, country-side, or castle, nor any place in all Romagna, nor officer or minister of the duke's, who does not know of these abuses; and, amongst others, the famine of wheat occasioned by the traffic which he held against our express prohibition, sending out such quantities as would abundantly have sufficed for the people and the army."

"Ah! Falso ribaldo!"

"This is what I wanted to tell Monsignor di Volterra [Soderini] when he came to Urbino, but I could not entrust him with the secret. Now that my opportunity has come, I have known very well how to make use of it, and I have done a great service to your masters."

"This government of yours does not please me, and I cannot trust it; you must change it and give me a pledge that you will observe everything you promised; otherwise you will soon realize that I do not want to live this way; and I will not ...my friend ...my enemy."

"The object of his campaign has not been to tyrannise, but to extirpate tyrants."

"The princes of the Italian Renaissance routinely used intrigue, treachery, and murder to further their aims. The most notorious among them were the Borgias, whose despotic rule of church and state made a lasting impression. Their leader, Pope Alexander VI, was a greedy and lecherous reprobate. His daughter Lucrezia gained an undeserved reputation for poisoning and incest, and her cold-blooded brother Cesare stopped at nothing to gain and increase power. Together, they terrorized Rome and expanded its domain. Their enterprise collapsed when Alexander Vi died, possibly by poisoning."

"Saturday evening the Duke Valentino arrived here, having come by estafette; His gracious majesty very cheerfully greeted and embraced him and conducted him to the Castle, where he gave him the room nearest to his own, he himself speeding supper and ordering several courses, and that evening three or four times he went to the room even in his nightshirt when he was going to bed. And he insisted on giving the Duke his own shirts and gowns and clothes to wear, the Duke Valentino not having as many waggons as he has horses. In one word, one could not do more for a son or a brother."

"The rather more dubious side of Nietzsche's 'evolutionism' is his glorification of the warrior -- particularly when, as an exemplification of the warrior-hero, he chooses an archetypal 'spoilt brat' like Cesare Borgia."

"What cruelties were not the result of his? Who could count all his crimes?"

"The free circulation of citizens, which is sacrosanct, cannot become the free circulation of criminals."

"[for indicted foreigners] simple expulsion is not enough (...) they must be arrested immediately, tried using a fast-track procedure, and then expelled to serve their sentences in the countries they came from, (...) it isn’t right that foreign criminals are being housed in our [Italian] jails."

"Italy as you know is the closest neighbour of both Tunisia and Libya so we are extremely concerned about the repercussions on the migratory situation in the southern Mediterranean."

"L'imitazione del male supera sempre l'esempio; comme per il contrario, l'imitazione del bene è sempre inferiore."

"Gli ambasciadori sono l'occhio e l'orecchio degli stati."

"Non è male alcuno nelle cose umane che non abbia congiunto seco qualche bene."

"Ha sempre dimostrato l'esperienza, e lo dimostra la ragione, che mai succedono bene le cose che dipendono da molti."

"Con disavvantaggio grande si fa la guerra con chi non ha che perdere."

"Frank sincerity is a quality much extolled among men and pleasing to every one, while simulation, on the contrary, is detested and condemned. Yet for a man's self, simulation is of the two by far the more useful; sincerity tending rather to the interest of others. But since it cannot be denied that it is not a fine thing to deceive, I would commend him whose conduct is as a rule open and straightforward, and who uses simulation only in matters of the gravest importance and such as very seldom occur; for in this way he will gain a name for honesty and sincerity, and with it the advantages attaching to these qualities. At the same time, when, in any extreme emergency, he resorts to simulation, he will draw all the greater advantage from it, because from his reputation for plain dealing his artifice will blind men more."

"Non combattete mai con la religione, né con le cose che pare che dependono da Dio; perché questo obietto ha troppa forza nella mente degli sciocchi."

"If displeased with any man, do all you can to prevent his seeing it, for otherwise he will become estranged. And occasions often arise when he might and would have served you had you not lost him by showing your dislike. Of this I have had experience to my own profit. For once and again I have felt ill-disposed towards some one who not being aware of my hostility has afterwards helped me when I needed help and proved my good friend."

"Francesco Guicciardini. Counsels and Reflections (Ricordi politici e civili). Translation by Ninian Hill Thomson. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1890."

"Inexorable as to principles, tolerant and impartial as to persons."

"The epoch of individuality is concluded, and it is the duty of reformers to initiate the epoch of association. Collective man is omnipotent upon the earth he treads."

"Art does not imitate, but interpret. It searches out the idea lying dormant in the symbol, in order to present the symbol to men in such form as to enable them to penetrate through it to the idea. Were it otherwise, what would be the use or value of art?"

"Nature is for art the garb of the Eternal. The real is the finite expression and representation of the true ; forms are the limits affixed by time and space to the power of life. Nature, reality, and form, should, all of them, be so rendered and expressed by art, as to reveal to mankind some ray of the truth — a vaster and profounder sentiment of life."

"Art is not the fancy or caprice of an individual. It is the mighty voice of God and the universe, as heard by the chosen spirit, and repeated in tones of harmony to mankind. Should that omnipotent voice strike too directly upon the mortal ear, it would stun and suspend all human action, even as Pantheism crushed the ancient Oriental world."

"Art is no isolated, unconnected, or inexplicable phenomenon. It draws its life from the life of the universe, and with the universe it ascends from epoch to epoch towards the Almighty. It owes its power over the souls of men to that collective life — even as the trees and plants draw their life from earth, the common mother; and its power would be destroyed should it attempt to forsake its source."

"Ideas grow quickly when watered with the blood of martyrs."

"The mother's first kiss teaches the child love; the first holy kiss of the woman he loves teaches man hope and faith in life."

"Every mission constitutes a pledge of duty. Every man is bound to consecrate his every faculty to its fulfilment. He will derive his rule of action from the profound conviction of that duty."

"One sole God; One sole ruler, — his Law; One sole interpreter of that law — Humanity."

"Hope nothing from foreign governments. They will never be really willing to aid you until you have shown that you are strong enough to conquer without them."

"Your first duties-first as regards importance-are, as I have already told you, towards Humanity. You are men before you are either citizens or fathers. If you do not embrace the whole human family in your affection, if you do not bear witness to your belief in the Unity of that family, consequent upon the Unity of God...if, wheresoever a fellow-creature suffers, or the dignity of human nature is violated by falsehood or tyranny-you are not ready, if able, to aid the unhappy, and do not feel called upon to combat, if able, for the redemption of the betrayed or oppressed-you violate your law of life, you comprehend not that Religion which will be the guide and blessing of the future."

"Country is not a mere zone of territory. The true country is the Idea to which it gives birth; it is the Thought of love, the sense of communion which unites in one all the sons of that territory."

"So long as a single one amongst your brothers has no vote to represent him in the development of the national life, so long as a single man, able and willing to work, languishes in poverty through want of work to do, you have no country in the sense in which country ought to exist-the country of all and for all."

"So long as you are ready to die for Humanity, the life of your country is immortal."

"The new claim on the part of the toiling multitude, the new sense of responsibility on the part of the well-to-do, arise in reality from the same source. They are in fact the same “social compunction,” and, in spite of their widely varying manifestations, logically converge into the same movement. Mazzini once preached, “the consent of men and your own conscience are two wings given you whereby you may rise to God.” It is so easy for the good and powerful to think that they can rise by following the dictates of conscience by pursuing their own ideals, leaving those ideals unconnected with the consent of their fellowmen."

"I encountered the influence of Mazzini, which was a source of great comfort to me...To me personally the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Mazzini's birth was a matter of great interest. Throughout the world that day Italians who believed in a United Italy came together. They recalled the hopes of this man who, with all his devotion to his country, was still more devoted to humanity and who dedicated to the workingmen of Italy, an appeal so philosophical, so filled with a yearning for righteousness, that it transcended all national boundaries and became a bugle call for "The Duties of Man.""

"Mazzini despised the compromises of the "whigs" and would have no truck with the diplomacy of a Cavour. Yet he came to admit that the programme of insurrections upon which he built his faith implied the sacrifice of a generation. Disdaining immediate objects, reaching far into the future—working for all or nothing—he pointed to the reward that would be enjoyed not by his contemporaries, not by their children perhaps, but at least (let us say) by their grandchildren. Unfortunately, at this very point—in the passage from one generation to another—history seems in a particular way to intervene and to deflect the results of human endeavour; so that we may doubt whether this attempt to overreach Time itself is the proper kind of far-sightedness to have in politics. Apart from new factors that may change the course of the story, there is a process which may give efficacy to the ideas of a Mazzini precisely in so far as these ideas can be made to serve the cause of power; and it is not entirely irrelevant that though Mazzini was no Fascist he did attack the individualism of 1789, and he taught young men to sink themselves—to intoxicate themselves—in the Organic People. One of the things that may happen therefore in the transition to a new generation is the possibility that Mazzini's whole doctrine—and his glorification of nationality—when mixed with a little earth and entangled in a world of tricks and chances, will form but the raw material for the next Mussolini that may arise."

"I have the duty before the conscience of my country and to defend the vitality of my people to speak as an Italian, but I feel the responsibility and the right to speak also as an anti-fascist democrat, as a representative of the new Republic that, harmonising in itself the humanitarian aspirations of Giuseppe Mazzini ([an Italian 33rd degree Scottish Rite Freemason]), the universalist conceptions of Christianity and the internationalist hopes of the workers, is all directed towards that lasting and reconstructive peace that you seek and towards that cooperation between peoples that you have the task of establishing."

"I doubt whether any man of his generation exercised so profound an influence on the destinies of Europe as did Mazzini. The map of Europe as we see it to-day is the map of Joseph Mazzini. He was the prophet of free nationality, but free nationality based on right, based above all on duty—the rights and duties of individuals, the rights and duties of races, the rights and duties and ideals of humanity."

"The liberation movements of the last eighty years, not merely in Italy, but throughout Europe, were inspired by his fervent teaching. It was the thrill which came from his words that gave nerve and power and courage and daring to the men who were struggling for the emancipation of the oppressed nationalities of Europe. He said in one of his books, "We are on the threshold of a great age, the age of the peoples." His doctrines, his ideals, his example, fired the hearts that led the peoples across the threshold into the new age. Italy has crossed it; the oppressed nations of Turkey have been emancipated; the oppressed races of Austria and Russia, and let me frankly add, Ireland, have gained by the doctrines of Joseph Mazzini. The glittering Imperial fabric reared by Bismarck is humbled in the dust, but the dreams of this young man, who came over as an exile to England and lived in poverty here for years, dependent on the charity of friends, and armed only with a pen, have now become startling realities throughout the whole Continent. Here, after he has been lying for fifty years in the soil he loved so well, we find in the reconstruction of Europe the great principles of Mazzini—the emancipation of races on the basis of freedom—converted into a treaty and into action. He taught not merely the rights of a nation; he taught the rights of other nations; not merely the right of your own nation to be free, but the right of the next nation to be equally free. We have learned half the lesson of Mazzini, and whether this age is the "Golden Age" predicted by Mazzini depends entirely upon the extent to which we learn the other half of his lesson."

"His was an age of fierce hatreds. I wish I could say this was not an age of fierce hatreds also. Mazzini said you can build nothing that lasts upon hate. Hate, he said, will destroy ultimately the very thing that you love. Mazzini said: "I want free nations; I want a Europe of free nations; but I do not want a Europe of free nations hating each other; I want a Europe of free nations that will be a brotherhood of peoples." He is the father of the idea of the League of Nations."

"There are men who blame Mazzini for the present position of things. He is not responsible for the frenzied nationalism which is the peril of to-day, the extravagant nationalism, the nationalism which has no respect for the rights of others. Mazzini never taught that. His career was an embodiment and a symbol of the good feeling and good understanding that exists between British and Italian democracies. He called this his "second country." Here he found refuge, protection, encouragement, support, friendship."

"Lost golden ages can be a very effective tool for motivating people in the present. “Unity was and is the destiny of Italy,” Giuseppe Mazzini, the great nineteenth- century Italian nationalist, urged the divided peninsula. “The civil primacy, twice exercised by Italy—through the arms of the Caesars and the voice of the Popes—is destined to be held a third time by the people of Italy— the nation.” Mazzini was also a liberal who believed that a world filled by self-governing peoples would be a happy, democratic, and peaceful one yet there was an ominous tone to his exhortations: “They who were unable forty years ago to perceive the signs of progress toward unity made in the successive periods of Italian life, were simply blind to the light of History. But should any, in the lace of the actual glorious manifestation of our people, endeavour to lead them back to ideas of confederations, and independent provincial liberty, they would deserve to be branded as traitors to their country.” A great past can be a promise, but it can also be a terrible burden. Mussolini promised the Italians a second Roman Empire and led them to disaster in World War II."

"We who have seen Italia in the throes, Half risen but to be hurled to ground, and now, Like a ripe field of wheat where once drove plough, All bounteous as she is fair, we think of those Who blew the breath of life into her frame: Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi: Three: Her Brain, her Soul, her Sword; and set her free ruinous discords, with one lustrous aim."

"Of Mazzini we may truly say what he said himself of Father Paul, the historian of the Council of Trent, that he was two distinct beings. He was sower of the seed, the indefatigable organiser, the conspirator, on behalf of the idea that he had invented and brought to life, of United Italy. Besides his ceaseless industry in this vexed sphere of action, his was the moral genius that spiritualised politics, and gave a new soul to public duty in citizens and nations. As practical statesman, when we have applauded him for the exalting political conception which his energy, ardour, and fire forced upon Italy and Europe, we have perhaps said all."

"[H]e stood for the voice of conscience in modern democracy. Of all the democratic gospellers of that epoch between 1848 and 1870...it was Mazzini who went nearest to the heart and true significance of democracy. He had a moral glow, and the light of large historic and literary comprehension, that stretched it into the foremost place in the minds of men with social imagination enough to look for new ideals, and courage enough to resist the sluggard's dread of new illusions. He pressed his finger on the People's intellectual pulse and warned them against the feverish beats that came from words and phrases passed off as ideas, or, still more dangerous, from fragments of an idea treated as if they were the idea whole. He warned them that human history is not a thing of disconnected fragments, and that recollection of great moves and great men in the past is needed to keep us safe on the heights of future and present. He did more; though figuring as restorer of a single nation, he was as earnest as Kant himself in urging the moral relations between different States, and the supremacy and overlordship of cosmopolitan humanity."

"I realized that if my friends and followers were to read Mazzini’s articles that will increase their faith in our methods enormously. In 1906, I and my colleagues in Abhinav Bharat were hardly twenty to twenty-two years of age. Our leaders, both Moderates and Militants dismissed our activities as ‘childish’. They were the leaders of our society at that time. But then Mazzini and his fellow revolutionaries were similarly ridiculed as ‘childish’ and ‘absurd’ by contemporary elders in Italian society in 1830s. Mazzini had replied to such ridicule in his articles. The funny thing was that in 1906 persons like Mazzini and Garibaldi were regarded as ‘great patriots’ by Indian leaders without realizing that in their days Mazzini and Garibaldi too were being branded as ‘foolhardy’ and ‘childish’. Mazzini’s articles were going to make firm our plans of action and induce faith among people of India in our methods."

"Italy would remember for ever the wonderful hospitality accorded by the English people to the great Italian exiles who had been the principal actors in the drama of their long national struggle towards freedom and unity. Mazzini's teaching was never more applicable than in these critical days when Europe was still suffering from the consequences of the Great War and was desperately striving to find its moral, political, and economic equilibrium, and to restart towards a reconstruction, not only of its shaken financial resources, but of its fundamental spirit of peace. He was proud and happy to affirm that both their countries, in close connexion with their Allies, were determined to try to accomplish that moral and economic settlement of Europe towards which the teachings of Mazzini pointed with the religious fervour of an apostle and a prophet."

"Perhaps of all men who have ever borne a great part in politics Mazzini was most entirely patriot. Through forty years of incessant thought, teaching, and action, in hiding or at the head of a revolutionary government, an idol or a denounced fugitive, in all countries and by all roads he pressed forward towards the same object, the transfer of Italy, once more united, from its foreign or semi-foreign despots to the sway of a freely elected Sovereign Assembly, which, as he trusted or believed, would be guided by something difficult to distinguish from direct inspiration from above. That he changed his means frequently is true, and that he sometimes subordinated means to ends can hardly be denied, for he was that rare character, a practical ideologue."

"In truth, he was neither anarchist nor Jacobin, nor even Revolutionist, but a calm and serene teacher and leader, a prophet possessed with a faith and absorbed in an object, who swayed men by the force of his ideas, the holiness of his life, and the unique loftiness of his character steadily onward towards an end which was not always theirs... This influence, rising in some cases to an ascendancy such as has hardly been given to the greatest religious teachers, was employed unswervingly for his single end, and it was employed successfully. Cavour made Italy, but it was due to Mazzini, and not to Cavour, that such making was possible."

"The idea of the powerless lawyer had penetrated an entire people, and Italy stood up unfettered and alive. In modern history no man armed only with spiritual weapons, strong only in his cause, his genius, and his character, has ever performed such a feat, or made so deep a personal impression on the history of mankind... It is among the greater Popes that we must seek for the analogue of Joseph Mazzini, the serene man possessed of and by a faith, who could use all weapons, and mould all men, and disregard all circumstances; whose gentleness was as inflexible as other men’s obstinacy; to whom earthly temptations had no meaning and earthly scruples no force; who could not pause, or change, or tremble, and who therefore at once achieved the lofty success and roused the undying hatreds which attend the course of the man who lives for an idea. Unstirred by the ordinary ambitions of men and unaffected by their ordinary passions, an ascetic by habit rather than conviction, incapable of envy as of doubt, irresistible in his power over hearts, which he used only to further his great cause; personally as gentle as a woman, but for his ideas implacable as a statue; eloquent with the eloquence which can persuade an individual or a Senate, yet averse to life in public; never induced even by his own genius to swerve for a moment from his appointed course; an immovable fanatic, with all the knowledge and all the tact of a finished grandee, Joseph Mazzini was what in the Roman Catholic ideal every Pope should be."

"It is as plain now that Mazzini was the greatest moral force in Europe during the nineteenth century... We must go back to Dante to find an Italian who had, like Mazzini, the combination of vivid practical intellect with a highly sensitive, even mystical, spirituality... As Dante spoke for the medieval world, so Mazzini is thus far Europe's most authentic spokesman of the ideals and hopes of our new epoch."

"We have to announce to-day the death of a man who in his time has played a most singular part upon the theatre of European politics; one whose name has for years been regarded as the symbol of Revolution, or rather of Republicanism; one in whose personal character there were many fine and noble qualities; but still a man who was feared even more widely than he was loved, and one whose departure from the scene of action, to say the least, will be no unwelcome news to several crowned and discrowned members of the family of European Sovereigns. He was the man who ever "troubled Israel" by his ceaseless efforts in the cause of Republicanism, and now at length he is at rest."

"In our own day classics have been dethroned without being replaced. But throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries our statesmen were so brought up that they thought of Rome as the hearth of their political civilization, where their predecessor Cicero had denounced Catiline; where the models of their own eloquence and statecraft, as taught them at Eton, Harrow and Winchester, had been practised and brought to perfection. And, therefore, the ruins of the Forum were as familiar, as sacred, and as moving to Russell and to Gladstone as to Mazzini and Garibaldi themselves. This was a prime fact in the history of the Risorgimento."

"He does not exalt the individual at the expense of the nation, like the disciples of Rousseau; nor the nation at the expense of the individual, as was the tendency of Hegel; nor humanity at the expense of both, as was the incurable aberration of Comte. Recognising that each of these has its peculiar function, he recognises no less fully that no one of them can put forth its energies without the others; that each of them is conditioned absolutely by the others; and that only to the most limited extent is it possible to mark off the sphere in which each operates even in partial independence of the others."

"Now it can hardly be doubted that the earliest writer to give its due place to nationality was Mazzini. He felt, as few men have felt, the force of the popular sentiment in this matter. He was alive also to its limitations. To him the nation is not, as it is to many, an end in itself. It is strictly a link in the chain between the individual on the one side and humanity on the other. He recognises, as no previous writer had done, what may be called the personality of the nation. He proclaims its right, or rather its obligation, both to defend itself against all encroachment, whether material or moral, from without, and to develop its inborn faculties to the highest possible pitch from within. He thus gives satisfaction to all that is either valid or worth having in the claims of nationality. At the same time, he marks out the limits beyond which the instinct of nationality becomes dangerous, or even harmful. He denies that it is a final and absolute principle. He persistently subordinates it to the larger claims of humanity. This at once bars out the possibility of any right to aggression as between one nation and another. It subjects all nations alike to the common ties which bind the members of one brotherhood, mankind. By the same stroke, Mazzini gives the only valid sanction to the real rights of nationality. He declares the free development of the national spirit to be essential to the true life of humanity. So far as it serves that end, it is nothing but good. As soon as it throws itself athwart that end, it becomes an enormous evil."

"I am very much moved, sir, to be in the presence of this monument. On the other side of the water we have studied the life of Mazzini with almost as much pride as if we shared in the glory of his history, and I am very glad to acknowledge that his spirit has been handed down to us of a later generation on both sides of the water. It is delightful to me to feel that I am taking some small part in accomplishing the realization of the ideals to which his life and thought were devoted. It is with a spirit of veneration, sir, and with a spirit I hope of emulation, that I stand in the presence of this monument and bring my greetings and the greetings of America with our homage to the great Mazzini."

"In a way it seems natural for an American to be a citizen of Genoa, and I shall always count it among the most delightful associations of my life that you should have conferred this honor upon me, and in taking away this beautiful edition of the works of Mazzini I hope that I shall derive inspiration from these volumes, as I have already derived guidance from the principles which Mazzini so eloquently expressed. It is very inspiring, sir, to feel how the human spirit is refreshed again and again from its original sources. It is delightful to feel how the voice of one people speaks to another through the mouth of men who have by some gift of God been lifted above the common level and seen the light of humanity, and therefore these words of your prophet and leader will, I hope, be deeply planted in the hearts of my fellow countrymen."

"[ ... ] The First World War had to be fought in order to allow the “Illuminati” to overthrow the power of the tsars in Russia and transform this country into the stronghold of atheistic communism. The differences stirred up by the agents of the “Illuminati” between the British and German empires were used to foment this war. After the war ended, communism had to be built up and used to destroy other governments and weaken religions."

"A chi vuol dar buon giudizio del suono, bisogna il sentire l’una campana, e l’altra."

"Chi alloggia alia prima osteria in ch’ ei avviene, trova ben spesso la mala notte."

"Non è differenza da i grandi, a gli uomini privati, mentre che dormono."

"Quanto più i luoghi son forti, tanto dee il principe esser più accurato in guardargli, perciochè non si sta da parte alcuna iu maggior pericolo, che da quella, d’onde gli par esser sicuro."

"L’haver buone leggi è nato, come dice il proverbio, da cattivi costumi."

"Ogni stato, come s’è detto, dee haver desiderio di pace, e fame con l’opere e con le parole dimostratione, ma con tutto ciò ne gli apparati militari, dee mostrarsi bellicoso, percioche la pace non armata è debole."

"Tanto nuoce il voler pigliare occasione troppo acerba, quanto lasciarla maturar troppo."

"Gli scrittori maledici sono con molta più attentione letti, che non sono quelli che vanno adulandi."

"Non è cosa che voglia tutta la diligenza dell’ uomo e che meno patisca gli errori, etiandio piccoli, quanto fa la guerra."

"Chi ha nimici potenti, dee per salvar se et ofTender loro, credere ferniamente due cose, verso di se contrarie; l’una che sieno arditi e prudenti, l’altra che con tutta la prudenza loro possano essi parimente errare."

"Io devo prendermela con qualcuno per ottenere risultati."

"As always, victory will have a hundred fathers, but defeat will never be acknowledged by anyone at all."

"We need to tell citizens what Europe is, it is not all about angels and demons. It is a reality which have helped us in numerous ways – and still helps us. I think about peace, a thing we now undervalue but which has a primary importance. Let’s think about fYROM, for instance. Nowadays, those countries, former enemies, are entering the Union or are already Member States. Then, the freedom of movement, the rights for consumers."

"There are mistakes, which governments have been doing when they were trying to face the economic crisis, since 2008. Slow choices, sometimes insufficient, sometimes wrong, never neutral. Political choices made by political governments which must assume their responsibility on them. In Italy we have adopted forward-looking choices, economically speaking, we have adopted austerity as leading value. Now it is time to work on development and growth, to create jobs and exit this crisis."

"We take the same line as the United States: the austerity policies need to be accompanied by greater flexibility to stimulate growth."

"You can't demand generational change on the one hand and expect 40 years of experience on the other."

"Many Italians suspect that this is our last chance for change."

"On World NGO Day, we celebrate the relentless and invaluable role of civil society organisations in protecting and fighting for fundamental human rights, democracy, and sustainable development for all."

"Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place."

"What struck me most about the Russian Communists, even in such really exceptional personalities as Lenin and Trotsky, was their utter incapacity to be fair in discussing opinions that conflicted with their own. The adversary, simply for daring to contradict, at once became a traitor, an opportunist, a hireling. An adversary in good faith is inconceivable to the Russian Communists. What an aberration of conscience this is, for so-called materialists and rationalists absolutely in their polemics to uphold the primacy of morals over intelligence! To find a comparable infatuation one has to go back to the Inquisition."

""Political regimes come and go, but bad habits endure." (alt trans = 'remain')"

"This reminded me of what Ignazio Silone said in 1945 soon after he returned to Italy from his Zurich exile: "The Fascism of tomorrow will never say 'I am Fascism.' It will say: 'I am anti-Fascism.'""

"Lewis has written that "man makes history." Althusser unleashes a pamphlet at him maintaining that such is not the case: "Ce sont les masses qui font I'histoire." I challenge anyone to find a social scientist outside the Marxist camp who can seriously pose a problem of this type."

"If, then, at the end of this analysis, I am asked to take off the mortar-board of the academic and put on the hat of someone deeply involved in the political developments of the age he lives in, I have no hesitation in saying that my preference is for the rule of law rather than of men. The rule of law is now celebrating its final triumph as the basis of the democratic system. What is democracy other than a set of rules (the so-called rules of the game) for the solution of conflicts without bloodshed? And what constitutes good democratic government if not rigorous respect for these rules? I for one have no doubts about how such questions are to be answered. And precisely because I have no doubts I can conclude in all good conscience that democracy is the rule of law par excellence. The very moment a democracy loses sight of this, its inspiring principle, it rapidly reverts into its opposite, into one of the many forms of autocratic government which haunt the chronicles of historians and the speculations of political thinkers."

"Philosophically, Bobbio’s response to the contemporary political condition of the West is the opposite of that of Rawls and Habermas. Where they have sought to efface the difference between sein and sollen, in a continual slide between idealizations of the existing world and factualizations of velleities beyond it, he has held fast to the principles of the legal positivism and political realism that formed him: values and facts are categorically separate domains, that are not to be confused. This is certainly an intellectual advantage he enjoys over them. But it comes at a price: to cut all connexion between the historical and the desirable risks delivering the world to what is undesirable, in the name of the same realism."

"Bobbio’s account of human rights is thus a far cry from the deontological versions of Rawls or Habermas. It is radically historical."

"Bobbio’s realism, what can be seen as the conservative strand in his thinking, had always coexisted, however, with liberal and socialist strands for which he is better known, and that held his primary moral allegiance. The balance between them was never quite stable, synthesis lying beyond reach. But in extreme old age, he could no longer control their tensions."

"According to leading Italian political scientist Norberto Bobbio, freedom of opinion and expression (and of association) strongly influences political participation and decision-making processes. Free public debates between political actors are essential in the political life of a community. The possibility of dissent in any public political or mediatic confrontation is the core of a democratic system of governance."

"No man can be judged a criminal until he be found guilty; nor can society take from him the public protection, until it have been proved that he has violated the conditions on which it was granted. What right, then, but that of power, can authorise the punishment of a citizen, so long as there remains any doubt of his guilt? The dilemma is frequent. Either he is guilty, or not guilty. If guilty, he should only suffer the punishment ordained by the laws, and torture becomes useless, as his confession is unnecessary. If he be not guilty, you torture the innocent; for, in the eye of the law, every man is innocent, whose crime has not been proved."

"[On the death penalty] Seems so absurd to me that the laws, that are the expression of the public will, that hate and punish the murder, make one themselves, and, to dissuade citizens from the murder, order a public murder. (Chapter XXVIII)"

"As punishments become more cruel, the minds of men, which like fluids always adjust to the level of their surroundings, become hardened, and the ever lively power of the emotions brings it about that after a hundred years of cruel tortures, the wheel causes no more fear than prison previously did. For a punishment to serve its purpose, it is only necessary that the harm that it inflicts outweighs the benefit that “the criminal can derive from the crime, and into the calculation of this balance, we must add the certainty of punishment and the loss of the good produced by the crime. Anything more than this is superfluous, and therefore tyrannical."

"All history is contemporary history."

"Poetry is produced not by the mere caprice of pleasure, but by natural necessity. It is the primary activity of the human mind."

"Language is articulated, limited sound organized for the purpose of expression."

"The mere economic action, the satisfaction of our immediate pleasure, though it satisfies us in relation to our individual end, yet it leaves constantly unsatisfied that which we are beside and beyond our individual determinations, our deepest and truest being. And this dissatisfaction will last until we succeed in lifting ourselves above the infinite succession of individual ends, and in inserting in them a universal value. This passage or conversion from the purely economic to the ethic, from pleasure to duty, is designed by Croce as the conquest of that peace which is not of a fabulous future, but of the present and real: in every instant is eternity, to him who knows how to reach it. Our actions will be always new, because always new problems are put before us by the course of reality; but in them, if we accomplish them with a pure heart, seeking in them what lifts them above themselves, we shall each time possess the Whole. Such is the character of the moral action..."

"[...] in the first rift between Croce and Gentile, Croce is the closest to original fascism. It is Croce who introduces Georges Sorel, one of the first cultural references of Fascism, into Italian culture; it is Croce who speaks, albeit in a critical dimension, of the ethical state; it is Croce who even encourages fascism and compares it to Cardinal Ruffo's Sanfedist hordes, believing that fascism has the function of sweeping away Bolshevism and the spiritual crisis and restoring the authority of the Italian state. Finally, I recall that it was Croce who suggested Gentile as Minister of Education to implement the school reform project that he, as minister, had initiated during the Giolitti era. In this vision, Fascism has a preparatory function for Croce in restoring true liberalism."

"In reality, Croce made a graft. The distinction became dialectical transition, opposition and overcoming. The vital and economic moment, innocent in itself, became, in its collision with other forms, the negative, the ugly, the error, the evil. Humanistic harmony was broken, and the rupture of equilibrium, the internal contrast, became the driving force of becoming and overcoming... But above all, one must ask whether the “graft”, which is always an artificial operation, has really been successful. This is the question that dramatically troubled Benedetto Croce until the very end."

"When my friends at Il Mondo asked me to speak in commemoration of Benedetto Croce, I hesitated at first. “Every true story,” Croce confessed in one of his last great works, Il carattere della filosofia moderna (The Character of Modern Philosophy), “is always autobiographical.” I became acquainted with Croce's writings in prison and in exile. Reading them revealed to me dialectical, historicist thinking. At the time, it seemed to circulate better than in other areas in the philosophy of praxis, as interpreted by Croce's teacher, Antonio Labriola, and developed by the leading figure of revolutionary anti-Fascism, Antonio Gramsci. It is no coincidence that, commenting on Gramsci's Lettere dalla prigionia (“Letters from Prison”), Croce himself wrote that “as a man of thought, he was one of us”."

"[...] Croce always felt at ease with artists who were fully “sliricati”, totally adhering to a fundamental motif, to a unified state of mind. Artists such as Ludovico Ariosto and Giovanni Verga seemed to have been born especially for him because every page they wrote contained him in his entirety. (p. 43)"

"For Fascism...the State and the individual are one, or better, perhaps, "State" and "individual" are terms that are inseparable in a necessary synthesis."

"Fascism as a consequence of its Marxian and Sorelian patrimony . . . conjoined with the influence of contemporary Italian idealism, through which Fascist thought attained maturity, conceives philosophy as praxis."

"The Fascist, on the other hand, conceives philosophy as a philosophy of practice (”praxis”). That concept was the product of certain Marxist and Sorellian inspirations (many Fascists and the Duce, himself, received their first intellectual education in the school of Marx and Sorel)—as well as the influence of contemporary Italian idealistic doctrines from which Fascist mentality drew substance and achieved maturity."

"It is necessary to distinguish between socialism and socialism—in fact, between idea and idea of the same socialist conception, in order to distinguish among them those that are inimical to Fascism. It is well known that Sorellian syndicalism, out of which the thought and the political method of Fascism emerged—conceived itself the genuine interpretation of Marxist communism. The dynamic conception of history, in which force as violence functions as an essential, is of unquestioned Marxist origin. Those notions flowed into other currents of contemporary thought, that have themselves, via alternative routes, arrived at a vindication of the form of State—implacable, but absolutely rational—that finds historic necessity in the very spiritual dynamism through which it realizes itself."

"Of which liberalism does one wish to speak? I distinguish two principal forms of liberalism. For one… liberty is a right; for the other a duty. For one it is a gift; for the other a conquest… One liberalism conceives liberty rooted in the individual, and therefore opposes the individual to the State, a State understood as possessing no intrinsic value—but exclusively serving the well being and the improvement of the individual. The State is seen as a means, not an end. It limits itself to the maintenance of public order, excluding itself from the entirety of spiritual life—which, therefore, remains exclusively a sphere restricted to the individual conscience. That liberalism, historically, is classical liberalism—of English manufacture. It is, we must recognize, a false liberalism, containing only half the truth. It was opposed among us by Mazzini with a criticism, that I maintain, is immortal. But there is another liberalism, that matured in Italian and German thought, that holds entirely absurd this view of the antagonism between the State and the individual."

"In the Renaissance there is much light, yes, and there is much in it with which Italians may share national pride. But there is much darkness. For the Renaissance is also the age of individualism, that through the splendid visions of poetry and art brought the Italian nation to the indifference, skepticism, and distracted cynicism of those who have nothing to defend, not in their family, their Fatherland, or in the world where every human personality conscious of its own value and personal dignity invest itself."

"The authority of the State was not a product, but a presupposition. It could not depend on the people, in fact, the people depended on the State… The Fascist state, on the other hand, is a popular state, and, in that sense, a democratic State par excellence… Every citizen shares a relationship with the State and is so intimate that the State exists only in so far as it is made to exist by the citizen."

"The authority of the State is not subject to negotiation, or compromise, or to divide its terrain with other moral or religious principles that might interfere in consciousness. The authority of the State has force and is true authority if, within consciousness, it is entirely unconditioned."

"The merit of Fascism was that it courageously and vigorously opposed itself to the prejudices of contemporary liberalism—to affirm that the liberty proposed by liberalism serves neither the people nor the individual."

"Gentlemen: Fascism is a party, a political doctrine. But Fascism, while being a party, a political doctrine is above all a total conception of life. So the fascist, whether his is writing in newspapers or reading them, going about his private life or talking to others, looking to the future or remembering the past and the past of his people, must always remember he is a Fascist. Thus he fulfills what can really be said to be the main characteristic of Fascism, to take life seriously. Life is toil, is effort, is sacrifice, is hard work."

"How many times has Fascism been accused with obtuse malevolence of barbarity? Well yes: once you understand the true significance of this barbarity we will boast of it, as the expression of the healthy energies which shatter false and baleful idols, and restore the health of the nation within the power of a State conscious of its sovereign rights which are its duties."

"After criticising Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel so much for establishing a system of categories that predetermined the path that spiritual development had to follow, the neo-Hegelians of Italy were unable to do anything other than replace it with a more restricted set of categories from which we cannot escape. What a beautiful story, deluding itself that it is walking when in reality it is always standing still in the small circle of those few forms, marking its steps in a monotonous rhythm! But life has little respect for these a priori assumptions; it teaches us that spiritual categories, no less than the physical-mathematical categories of space, time, cause and quantity, are schemes that we construct to coordinate our experiences, and that they have nothing fixed, nothing necessary or eternal that can be deduced a priori."

"It was Gentile who prepared the road for those—like me—who wished to take it."

"What distinguished Gentile’s Fascist rationale from that which came to characterize the legitimating rationale of Marxist-Leninism was Gentile’s identification of the nation—rather than the ‘proletariat’—as the community of destiny that would shape our time. For Gentile, proletarians represented only component elements of a larger organic community: the nation. In the modern world, only the nation could provide the material, intellectual, political, and moral environment in which the individual might find fulfillment."

"Many of the principal theoreticians of Fascism, as we have seen, had been schooled in Marxism and, like Giovanni Gentile, demonstrated a competence in the material that won the admiration of Lenin himself. The fact was that the philosophical neo-idealism that served Fascism as its normative foundation shared its origins with orthodox Marxism through their common connection to Hegelianism… Like Marx, Gentile rejected the ‘liberal’ conviction that human beings are best understood as independent, self-sufficient monads, possessed of inherent freedoms, interacting only at their conveniences."

"There is persuasive evidence that the thought of Karl Marx exercised considerable influence over all Gentile’s subsequent philosophical development. It can be said, in a qualified sense, that Gentile entertained considerable sympathy for the neo-Hegelian Marxist intellectual tradition."

"We have reached the conclusion that what we eat is responsible for a large number of tumors, and that certain foods trigger cancer while others have a protective value. Meat and its derivatives figure among carcinogenic foods of the intestines. Meat, in fact, is particularly rich in saturated fatty acids, substances that lead to damaging activity in regard to our bodies in general. Furthermore, certain forms of tumors, such as intestinal cancer, are directly correlated to the consumption of meat, while others, such as endometrial tumors, are linked to obesity."

"We have to consider that the foods we ingest let a certain amount of soluble toxic substances dispersed in the environment into our bodies. These polluting substances are harmful if we breathe them in, but they are even more so if we ingest them. By consuming meat, we put ourselves precisely in that position, because such substances in the atmosphere fall back to Earth, and hence, onto the grass that, when eaten by cattle, introduces harmful substances into their adipose deposits and therefore into their flesh, and finally, onto our plates."

"It should be remembered that the pharmacologic treatment of raised farm animals can cause damage to the health of anyone who eats their meat. For example, the antibiotics that are legally added to animal feed—with the objective of preventing infections—can cause a resistance to antibiotics in humans. That is to say, a selection of bacterial strains resistant to antibiotics can be transmitted from animals to man through food; and can thereby generate infections difficult to stop (at times fatal, as with salmonella)."

"Fruit and vegetables, instead, are foods extremely low in fats and high in fiber: by easing the passage of ingested food, they reduce the time of contact between possible carcinogens—present in our daily diet—with the walls of the intestines."

"A vegetarian diet, by reason of its low content of saturated fatty acids, cholesterol, and animal proteins, and its high concentrations of folic acids, antioxidants, and phytoestrogens—shown to be effective in inhibiting the growth or in promoting the regression of serious coronary pathologies—constitutes a barrier against a number of chronic degenerative diseases, cancer among them. And that is not all. Fruits and vegetables—besides contaminating us much less than some other foods—are troves of precious substances that enable the neutralization of carcinogenic agents and that 'dilute' the concentration of diseased cells and reduce their proliferation. All of these advantages, as well as many others, emerged from studies on populations in the last century."

"Prevention is within reach of everyone. And here are recommendations: abstain from smoking, eat less, eat mostly vegetarian foods, an active mind and body, and follow individually designed early diagnostic regimens."

"I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor provisions; I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country in his heart, and not with his lips only, follow me."

"Qui si fa l'Italia o si muore."

"Roma o morte!"

"Il giorno in cui i contadini saranno educati nel vero, i tiranni e gli schiavi saranno impossibili sulla terra."

"Obbedisco."

"I am a Christian and I speak to Christians—I am a good Christian and speak to good Christians. I love and venerate the religion of Christ because Christ came into the world to deliver humanity from slavery for which God has not created it. But the Pope, who wishes all men to be slaves—who demands of the powerful of the earth fetters and chains for Italians—the Pope king does not know Christ. He lies to his religion. Among the Indians, two geniuses are recognized and adored: that of good and that of evil. Well, the Genius of Evil for Italy is the Pope king. Let no one misunderstand my words—let no one confound Popery with Christianity—the Religion of Liberty with the avaricious and sanguinary Politics of Slavery."

"As to his Goddess Reason, I understand by it simply an adoption of what are called on the continent the principles of the French Revolution. These we neither want nor warmly relish in England."

"We who have seen Italia in the throes, Half risen but to be hurled to ground, and now, Like a ripe field of wheat where once drove plough, All bounteous as she is fair, we think of those Who blew the breath of life into her frame: Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi: Three: Her Brain, her Soul, her Sword; and set her free ruinous discords, with one lustrous aim."

"All in all, there is no great figure of modern times so wholly admirable."

"He evoked from the people and even from the politicians a personal devotion almost without parallel in modern history; again and again he chose the right course by instinct; and he showed himself the greatest general that Italy has ever produced."

"In our own day classics have been dethroned without being replaced. But throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries our statesmen were so brought up that they thought of Rome as the hearth of their political civilization, where their predecessor Cicero had denounced Catiline; where the models of their own eloquence and statecraft, as taught them at Eton, Harrow and Winchester, had been practised and brought to perfection. And, therefore, the ruins of the Forum were as familiar, as sacred, and as moving to Russell and to Gladstone as to Mazzini and Garibaldi themselves. This was a prime fact in the history of the Risorgimento."

"I can certainly call myself an anti-democrat, but I am not an anti-liberal; indeed I am opposed to pure democracy precisely because I am a liberal. I believe that the ruling class ought not to be monolithic and homogeneous but ought to consist of elements which are diverse in regard to origin and interests; when, instead, political power originates from a single source, even if this be elections with universal suffrage, I regard it as dangerous and liable to become oppressive. Democratic Jacobinism is an illiberal doctrine precisely because it subordinates everything to a single force, that of the so-called majority, on which it does not set any limits."

"In reality the dominion of an organized minority, obeying a single impulse, over the unorganized majority is inevitable. The power of any minority is irresistible as against each single individual in the majority, who stands alone before the totality of the organized minority. At the same time, the minority is organized for the very reason that it is a minority. A hundred men acting uniformly in concert, with a common understanding, will triumph over a thousand men who are not in accord and can therefore be dealt with one by one. Meanwhile it will be easier for the former to act in concert and have a mutual understanding simply because they are a hundred and not a thousand. It follows that the larger the political community, the smaller will the proportion of the governing minority to the governed majority be, and the more difficult will it be for the majority to organize for reaction against the minority."

"This legal and moral basis, or principle, on which the power of the political class rests, is what we have elsewhere called, and shall continue here to call, the “political formula.’ (Writers on the philosophy of law generally call it the “principle of sovereignty.”) The political formula can hardly be the same in two or more different societies; and fundamental or even notable similarities between two or more political formulas appear only where the peoples professing them have the same type of civilization [...]. According to the level of civilization in the peoples among whom they are current, the various political formulas may be based either upon supernatural beliefs or upon concepts which, if they do not correspond to positive realities, at least appear to be rational. We shall not say that they correspond in either case to scientific truths. A conscientious observer would be obliged to confess that, if no one has ever seen the authentic document by which the Lord empowered certain privileged persons or families to rule his people on his behalf, neither can it be maintained that a popular election, however liberal the suffrage may be, is ordinarily the expression of the will of a people, or even of the will of the majority of a people. And yet that does not mean that political formulas are mere quackeries aptly invented to trick the masses into obedience. Anyone who viewed them in that light would fall into grave error. The truth is that they answer a real need in man’s social nature; and this need, so universally felt, of governing and knowing that one is governed not on the basis of mere material or intellectual force, but on the basis of a moral principle, has beyond any doubt a practical and a real importance."

"Spencer wrote that the divine right of kings was the great superstition of past ages, and that the divine right of elected assemblies is the great superstition of our present age. The idea cannot be called wholly mistaken, but certainly it does not consider or exhaust all aspects of the question. It is further necessary to see whether a society can hold together without one of these “great superstitions”—whether a universal illusion is not a social force that contributes powerfully to consolidating political organization and unifying peoples or even whole civilizations."

"As social organization progresses and the governing class begins to reap the benefits of an improved bureaucratic machine, its superiority in culture and wealth, and especially its better organization and firmer cohesion, may compensate to some extent for the lack of individual energy; and so it may come about that considerable portions of the governing class, especially the circles that give the society its intellectual tone and direction, lose the habit of dealing with people of the lower classes and command them directly. This state of affairs generally enables frivolousness, and a sort of culture that is wholly abstract and conventional, to supplant a vivid sense of realities and a sound and accurate knowledge of human nature. Thinking loses virility. Sentimental and exaggeratedly humanitarian theories come to the fore, theories that proclaim the innate goodness of men, especially when they are not spoiled by civilization, or theories that uphold the absolute preferableness, in the arts of government, of gentle and persuasive means to severe authoritarian measures. People imagine, as Taine puts it, that since social life has flowed blandly and smoothly on for centuries, like an impetuous river confined withing sturdy dikes, the dikes have become superfluous and can readily be dispensed with, now that the river has learned its lesson. […] It would seem therefore that there is a frequent, if not a universal, tendency in very mature civilizations, where ruling classes have acquired highly refined literary cultures, to wax enthusiastic, by a sort of antithesis, over the simple ways of savages, barbarians and peasants (the case of Arcadia!), and to clothe them with all sorts of virtues and sentiments that are as stereotyped as they are imaginary. Invariably underlying all such tendencies is the concept that was so aptly phrased by Rousseau, that man is good by nature but spoiled by society and civilization. This notion has had a very great influence on political thinking during the past hundred and fifty years. […] [W]hen the ruling class has degenerated in the manner described, it loses its ability to provide against its own dangers and against those of the society that has the misfortune to be guided by it. So the state crashes at the first appreciable shock from the outside foe. Those who govern are unable to deal with the least flurry; and the changes that a strong and intelligent ruling class would have carried out at a negligible cost in wealth, blood and human dignity take on the proportions of a social cataclysm."

"One should note, as an example, that in the course of the nineteenth century England adopted peacefully and without violent shocks almost all the basic civil and political reforms that France paid so heavily to achieve through the great Revolution. Undeniably, the great advantage of England lay in the greater energy, the greater practical wisdom, the better political training, that her ruling class possessed down to the very end of the past century."

"[W]hen the class that monopolizes wealth and arms embodies its power in a centralized bureaucracy and an irresistible standing army, we get a despotism in its worst form – namely, a barbarous and primitive system of government that has the instruments of an advanced civilization at its disposal, a yoke of iron which is applied by rough and reckless hands and which is very hard to break, since it has been steeled and tempered by practical artisans."

"There is no use either in cherishing illusions as to the practical consequences of a system in which political power and control of economic production and distribution are irrevocably delegated to, or conferred upon, the same persons. In so far as the state absorbs and distributes a larger and larger portion of the public wealth, the leaders of the ruling class come to possess greater and greater facilities for influencing and commanding their subordinates, and more and more easily evade control by anybody."

"Down to a few generations ago—and even today in the eyes of many writers and statesmen—all flaws in representative government were attributed to incomplete or mistaken applications of the principles of representation and suffrage. Louis Blanc, Lamartine and indeed all the democratic writers in France before 1848 ascribed the alleged corruption of the July Monarchy and all the drawbacks of the French parliamentary system to interference by the monarch with the elective bodies and, especially, to limited suffrage. Similar beliefs were widely current in Italy down to thirty years ago. For instance, they formed, as they still form, the groundwork of the Mazzinian school [...] [And yet precisely] [w]hat happens in other forms of government — namely, that an organized minority imposes its will on the disorganized majority — happens also and to perfection, whatever the appearances to the contrary, under the representative system. When we say that the voters “choose” their representative, we are using a language that is very inexact. The truth is that the representative has himself elected by the voters, and, if that phrase should seem too inflexible and too harsh to fit some cases, we might qualify it by saying that his friends have him elected. In elections, as in all other manifestations of social life, those who have the will and, especially, the moral, intellectual and material means to force their will upon others take the lead over the others and command them."

"From our point of view there can be no antagonism between state and society. The state is to be looked upon merely as that part of society which performs the political function. Consider in this light, all questions touching interference or non-interference by the state come to assume a new aspect. Instead of asking what the limits of state activity ought to be, we try to find out what the best type of political organization is, which type, in order words, enables all the elements that have a political significance in a given society to be best utilized and specialized, best subjected to reciprocal control and to the principle of individual responsibility for the things that are done in the respective domains."

"The day can hardly come when conflicts and rivalries among different religions and parties will end. [...] Even granting that such a world could be realized, it does not seem to us a desirable sort of world. So far in history, freedom to think, to observe, to judge men and things serenely and dispassionately, has been possible—always be it understood, for a few individuals—only in those societies in which numbers of different religious and political currents have been struggling for dominion. That same condition [...] is almost indispensable for the attainment of what is commonly called “political liberty’” — in other words, the highest possible degree of justice in the relations between governors and governed that is compatible with our imperfect human nature. In fact, in societies where choice among a number of religious and political currents has ceased to be possible because one such current has succeeded in gaining exclusive control, the isolated and original thinker has to be silent, and moral and intellectual monopoly is infallibly associated with political monopoly, to the advantage of a caste or of a very few social forces."

"The feeling that springs spontaneously from an unprejudiced judgment of the history of humanity is compassion for the contradictory qualities of this poor human race of ours, so rich in abnegation, so ready at times for personal sacrifice, yet whose every attempt, whether more or less successful or not at all successful, to attain moral and material betterment, is coupled with an unleashing of hates, rancors and the basest passions. A tragic destiny is that of men! Aspiring ever to pursue and achieve what they think.is the good, they ever find pretexts for slaughtering and persecuting each other. Once they slaughtered and persecuted over the interpretation of a dogma, or of a passage in the Bible. Then they slaughtered and persecuted in order to inaugurate the kingdom of liberty, equality and fraternity. Today they are slaughtering and persecuting and fiendishly torturing each other in the name of other creeds. Perhaps tomorrow they will slaughter and torment each other in an effort to banish the last trace of violence and injustice from the earth!"

"We must not infer from [the decline of religion] that rationalistic or scientific education has made any great progress in the lower classes. A person may not only question the truth of religious doctrines — he may also be convinced that all religions are historical phenomena born of innate and profound needs of the human spirit, and that attitude may be arrived at through a realistic mental training based on comprehensive studies that have gradually accustomed the mind not to accept as true anything that is not scientifically proved. In such a case, on losing one system of illusions, the individual is left so well balanced that he will not be inclined to embrace another, and certainly not the first that comes along. But the mass of lower-class unbelievers that we have in nations of European civilization today — and also, it must be confessed, the great majority of unbelievers who are not exactly lower-class, do not arrive at rationalism over any such road. They disbelieve, and they scoff, simply because they have grown up in environments in which they have been taught to disbelieve and to scoff. Under those circumstances, the mind that rejects Christianity because it is based on the supernatural is quite ready to accept other beliefs, and beliefs that may well be cruder and more vulgar. [...] Instead of believing blindly in the priest they believe blindly in the revolutionary agitator. They pride themselves on being in the vanguard of civilization, and their minds are open to all sorts of superstitions and sophistries. The moral and intellectual status which they have attained, far from being an enlightened positivism, is just a vulgar, sensuous, degrading materialism — it is “‘indifferentism,” if one prefers to call it that."

"What is the secret of the amazing subordination of the armies of the West? Mosca finds the answer in the aristocratic character, so to say, of the army, first in the fact that there is a wide and absolute social distinction between private and officer, and second that the corps of officers, which comes from the ruling class, reflects the balance of multiple and varied social forces which are recognized by and within that class. The logical implications of this theory are well worth pondering. If the theory be regarded as sound, steps toward the democratization of armies—the policy of Mr. Hore-Belisha, for instance—are mistaken steps which in the end lead toward military dictatorships; for any considerable democratization of armies would make them active social forces reflecting all the vicissitudes of social conflict and, therefore, preponderant social forces. On the other hand, army officers have to be completely eliminated from political life proper. When army officers figure actively and ex officio in political councils, they are certain eventually to dominate those councils and replace the civil authority — the seemingly incurable cancer of the Spanish world, for an example."

"Mosca, founder of the "Italian elitist" school, arguably the Darwin of his field, today known only even to specialists as a precursor of fascism, saw that within every governed society, all human beings can be divided into three clear sets. One is the officials, people “in the loop” who have the power to control or affect government decisions. Anyone who isn’t an official is a subject. The set of all officials is the regime. The set of all nonofficials is the public. Subjects are divided into two sets by a simple accounting: clients, who are economically dependent on the regime; commoners, on whom the regime is economically dependent. Clients naturally admire the regime; commoners naturally resent it. Individual human opinion is never deterministic. But these three human perspectives—regime, commons, and clientele—nourish three kinds of political cultures, classes, or traditions. And while there may be many distinct common and client cultures, there is almost never more than one official culture: the people who govern, plus the people who think like them. Every objective political theory is a theory of this official class. Sovereignty, the absolute power of all officials over all subjects, is conserved. All government is unconditional. All “freedoms” are conditional privileges granted by the regime — what are “judges” but officials?"

"The psychological sword of the state is the political formula. A political formula is any thought—good or bad, true or false, crazy or sane—that convinces the subject to love, serve, and obey the officials. For instance, the slogan “Black Lives Matter” is a political formula. It exhorts us to support those forces, persons, and institutions that promote, or are purported to promote, “Black Lives.” ...The ideal formula has a message for each culture. For the regime, the best formula is self-affirming; it convinces the official class that it is doing the right thing. For the clientele, the best formula is self-interested; it convinces the clients that the regime is working for them. For the commons, the best formula is self-deprecating; it convinces the commoners to stay humble and pay their taxes."

"The stronger and more powerful a state, the highest and richer the life of its inhabitants."

"This idea of the state as a force (which as a result of the current general state of ignorance is seen as a German Prussian idea) is plainly a Latin and Italian one. It is directly linked with the intellectual tradition of Rome and was refurbished by Machiavelli’s political philosophy."

"I believe in the legal and social necessity of penalties, for penalties are not made only for delinquents. Penalties are made for all, because their essential function is to hold in sight of all citizens a threat of consequences, which operates powerfully as a psychologic motive, and does cause most citizens to observe the law."

"The nation that refuses to behave nationalistically, when all the other nations are doing so, is fatally destined to die."

"Woe betide the Italian people if, while others are engaging in super-imperialism, they do not at least engage in nationalism!"

"In sociology, just as in biology, uniformity and immobility are death."

"Thus the facts demonstrate that, while the epoch of nationalities was coming to a close with the national reconstitution of the last remaining peoples yet to accomplish it, the epoch of empires of super-States was opening, bringing colossi which dwarfed the great empires of history."

"T[he clerks who are blackmailing the State, the politicking socialists, and the full-belly fanatics are not part of the nation. Nationality is a spiritual fact, not a physical phenomenon. It is not people who are born and live in the national territory who belong to the nation, but those who feel spiritually bound to it."

"Thus liberalism, democracy, and socialism appear to be, as they are in reality, not only the offspring of one and the same theory of government but also logical derivations one of the other. Logically, developed liberalism leads to democracy; the logical development of democracy issues into socialism. It is true that for many years, and with some justification, socialism was looked upon as antithetical to liberalism. But the antithesis is purely relative and breaks down as we approach the common origin and foundation of the two doctrines, for we find that the opposition is one of method, not of purpose. The end is the same for both, namely, the welfare of the individual members of society. The difference lies in the fact that liberalism would be guided to its goal by liberty, whereas socialism strives to attain it by the collective organization of production."

"Fascism replaces, therefore, the old atomistic and mechanical state theory that was at the basis of the liberal and democratic doctrines with an organic and historic concept… The important thing is to ascertain that this organic concept of the state gives to society a continuous life over and beyond the existence of the several individuals."

"The relations, therefore, between state and citizens are completely reversed by the fascist doctrine. Instead of the liberal-democratic formula, ‘society for the individual,’ we have, ‘individuals for society’ with this difference, however: that while the liberal doctrines eliminated society, fascism does not submerge the individual in the social group. It subordinates him but does not eliminate him, the individual as a part of his generation ever remaining an element of society however transient and insignificant he may be."

"For liberalism, the individual is the end and society the means… For fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends. The state, therefore, guards and protects the welfare and development of individuals not for their exclusive interest but because of the identity of the needs of individuals with those of society as a whole."

"Fascism on the other hand, faces squarely the problem of the right of the state and of the duty of individuals. Individual rights are only recognized insofar as they are implied in the rights of the state. In this preeminence of duty we find the highest ethical value of fascism."

"Fascism does not look upon the doctrine of economic liberty as an absolute dogma. It does not refer economic problems to individual needs, to individual interest, to individual solutions. On the contrary, it considers the economic development, and especially the production of wealth, as an eminently social concern, wealth being for society an essential element of power and prosperity."

"Fascism discovers sovereignty to be inherent in society when it is juridically organized as a state. Democracy, therefore, turns over the government of the state to the multitude of living men that they may use it to further their own interests; fascism insists that the government be entrusted to men capable of rising above their own private interests and of realizing the aspirations of the social collectivity, considered in its unity and in its relation to the past and future. Fascism, therefore, not only rejects the dogma of popular sovereignty and substitutes for it that of state sovereignty, but it also proclaims that the great mass of citizens is not a suitable advocate of social interests for the reason that the capacity to ignore individual private interests in favor of the higher demands of society and of history is a very rare gift and the privilege of the chosen few."

"Fascism therefore has transformed the labor union, that old revolutionary instrument of syndicalistic socialists, into an instrument of legal defense of the classes both within and without the law courts. This solution may encounter obstacles in its development (the obstacles of malevolence, of suspicion of the untried, of erroneous calculation, etc.), but it is destined to triumph even though it must advance through progressive stages."

"Rocco was one of the foremost juridical thinkers of his generation, the leading ideologue of the Italian Nationalist Association, and the man who, as Mussolini's Minister of Justice between January 1925 and July 1932, planned the laws which were the basis of Fascism's transformation from government into totalitarian state."

"Rocco saw the modern era as a long war between the forces of social cohesion and individualism."

"Seventy years ago people used to die for this idea [communism] [...], in Turin the members of the Communist Party, during the Resistance, had to endure 8 hours of torture. Fascists] would pull your eyes out with teaspoons, they'd rip your nails out with tweezers. And you had to stay silent for eight hours, and only after that you were allowed to confess and give the names of your comrades, and that was a Party guideline, to ensure the comrades' flight in those eight hours. Those men and women died for this idea. And what's politics today? They must be rolling in their own grave, can't you see that?"

"Against the obvious dictatorship of the globalist bourgeoisie we have to develop the idea of a proletarian dictatorship, that nobody has to fear, since it's the only true democracy for the people."

"Nowadays he's depicted as a reciprocal of Hitler, his name serves the purpose of fighting communism. Yet just remembering him makes the bosses tremble. He built the first socialist state and without him nazism would have won. His Russian name is translated as "steel". Stalin, terror of the fascists and of the false communists. Honor and glory to you!"

"Berlinguer was an honest person, but that's not enough to be a communist."

"He [Fidel Castro] is the idea that never dies . The ones that are criticising him in a few years will not even be on Wikipedia anymore. Fidel and the cuban revolution are History."

"They're building armoured skyscrapers in New York, every flat costs 100 billions euros. We're going towards a new middle-age: there'll be fortresses with rich chinese, russians, indians, arabians, americans inside, while the rest of the world will live in a new dark age."

"A historical and ideological fact that I consider almost a "proof" of loyalty in the bolshevism ideals: the matter of Stalin. Distrust those who disparage or even forget the figure of the continuer of Lenin's work, who was able to build socialism in the USSR and defeat the Nazi beast."

"They told us that after 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and 1991, with the hauling down of the red flag from the Kremlin, the "end of history" had come, that capitalism had won and that it was the only possible path to follow. We have seen in this 20 years that it isn't so."

"Greta is built in a laboratory! She has the proper face, the proper pigtails, the proper illness, she is properly little... She and all her family settled down forever, but it is evident that they are used. After two days she shook hands with miss Christine Lagarde, who leads the IMF. She is pure laboratory creation."

"Fascism is used by the bourgeoisie when the latter consider itself no longer able to fight off the peril of a socialist revolution. Fascism is, therefore, organic to the logics of capitalism and represents a more authoritarian handling that bosses temporary use, when necessary, in order to maintain their rule."

"Gualtieri is just a mere political enforcer of the will of banks and big finance. Direct expression of the economic powers that supported his appointment, he is the representative of the most hostile elements to the workers, their interests and their aspirations."

"In the name of Stalin we always won, in the name of Stalin all victories will be ours."

"We know that our struggle is not easy, that it will still be long and hard because the big capital is determined to betray the fatherland and to commit all kind of crimes just to save its privileges; yet we know that the path showed us by Stalin is the right one and that following this path we'll be able to conquer victory."

"Kodra: Quasi un simbolo generazionale."

"Gualtieri is just a mere political enforcer of the will of banks and big finance. Direct expression of the economic powers that supported his appointment, he is the representative of the most hostile elements to the workers, their interests and their aspirations."

"Yet, alongside Western weaknesses, there were also serious problems for the Soviet system, while the American position was less bleak, in both absolute and relative terms, than the successive electoral defeats of presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in presidential elections in 1976 and 1980 might suggest. Moreover, the failure of the Communists to benefit substantially from the changes in Portugal, Spain and Greece was matched by Communist weakness elsewhere in Western Europe. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, French President from 1974 to 1981, and Helmut Schmidt, German Chancellor from 1974 to 1982, combined to act as a very strong stabilising force and to relaunch the EEC project. Within the Socialist International, the so-called Socialist Triangle of Willy Brandt, Olof Palme, Swedish Prime Minister, and Bruno Kreisky, Austrian Chancellor, was dominant. In Italy, the Communist Party, the most powerful in Western Europe, adopted a ‘Euro-Communism’ that was opposed to Soviet direction. Enrico Berlinguer, who became Party Secretary in 1973, a key figure, was committed to the existing democratic system and pursued what was termed the ‘historic compromise’ with the established Christian Democrat-dominated political system. A pact was negotiated in 1976, with the Communist Party agreeing not to try to overthrow the Christian Democratic government. Euro-Communism was a term coined in 1975 by Western European Communist leaders keen to demonstrate their democratic credentials. More generally in Western Europe, the declining position of heavy industries was a challenge to the trade unions that were central to left-wing political parties, and notably to the Communists."

"Berlinguer was an honest person, but that's not enough to be a communist."

"Mussolini is clever, demagogic, devoid of scruples, and he has learned a great deal from the Russian Revolution."

"Fascism has made grandiose Social Revolution, Mussolini and Lenin, Soviet and Fascist corporate state, Rome and Moscow. Several stands already taken had to be rectified, we have nothing of which to ask pardon for as both in present and past we are impelled by the same ideal: the triumph of work."

"Stalin will never make socialism; rather Mussolini will."

"Long live Mussolini! Long live socialism!"

"I saw that it was this that tormented him the most: the attraction that fascism exercised upon the extreme left. He had been a teacher with Mussolini in a little Italian village, he knew him well and even while hating him liked him a little."

"Un magistrato deve essere imparziale quando esercita le sue funzioni ma io confesso che non mi sento del tutto imparziale. Anzi, mi sento partigiano, sono un partigiano della Costituzione."

"Azione Civile è un movimento civico puro, fuori dai partiti, che oggi avvia una campagna di adesione aperta ai cittadini che credono in questo progetto per radicarsi sul territorio."

"Today we have a more civilized mafia and a more mafia-like society. A mafia that increasingly wears suits and ties and a society that changes its clothes too many times a day and chooses to disguise itself. In short, we have entire sections of society that have now internalized the behavioral models of mafiosi. And you can see it in all areas."

"(About the ideal government) I am a candidate for Prime Minister, so I will be the president of the Council and also take on the role of interim Minister of Justice. Travaglio would be an excellent choice for the Ministry of Information, as he is outside the political sphere, while I would put Fiorella Mannoia in charge of Culture. Then I would put the economist w:it:Vladimiro Giacché in charge of the Economy, a worker in charge of Labor, and a police officer in charge of the Interior. We need competent people, not like Castelli, who was an engineer, and Carfagna, let's not even go there..."

"As a people, we have been stripped of monetary sovereignty, but not only monetary sovereignty. We have been stripped of financial sovereignty, we have been stripped of political sovereignty. We are subjects, we are not sovereign in our own country. [...] And this lack of sovereignty, this expropriation of sovereignty, is not an accident, it is not a coincidence. It is part of a precise plan, which is not only Italian [...]. I believe that it is a rearguard battle to say, “We want another Europe, we will build another Europe”: within these institutions and within this Europe, another Europe is impossible. We must tear down this Europe, as it is today, as it is constructed, with its institutions and the primacy of finance over politics that has been established. [...] We must withdraw from the European treaties."

"(About Pietro Grasso) He was a magistrate of great experience, courage, and professional ability, but it must be remembered that he became national anti-Mafia prosecutor thanks to a law passed ad personam by Silvio Berlusconi, which excluded Gian Carlo Caselli, who had more qualifications than Pietro Grasso. Grasso himself said in a famous interview that the Berlusconi government deserved a special award for its anti-Mafia activities. Pietro Grasso is certainly not left-wing, nor has he ever been in his brief forays into politics. Even when Caselli was appointed prosecutor of Palermo in 1992, Grasso was his opponent, the candidate of the then Minister of Justice Martelli. Therefore, he did not have a left-wing position, as the founders of Liberi e Uguali do. He was then supported by the Berlusconi government against Caselli. [...] Grasso has always taken a very cautious stance on many of the Palermo prosecutor's initiatives. He did not want to sign the Palermo prosecutor's appeal against the acquittal of Andreotti in the first instance. When he was my boss, he was very lukewarm about the investigations I had carried out into criminal networks, the State-Mafia negotiations, and the Dell'Utri trial. He has always been a prudent man, legitimately so, but also a cautious magistrate."

"Borsellino once, we were at his house in Marsala one evening, so before he even arrived in Palermo, I remember it clearly even though he didn't give me any precise explanations about it, he said to me, and I quote: "w:it:Pietro Giammanco is a man of Lima," a statement that obviously upset me."

"I would define the case De Magistris as emblematic of what happens when a magistrate finds himself isolated and overexposed, managing an extremely complex and delicate investigation into a tangle of legal and illegal interests involving diverse individuals and circles, on the cusp where criminal, political, and institutional spheres meet. As often happens in areas where integrated criminal systems operate. And I am referring, of course, to the criminal systems associated with the mafia in Sicily and the 'ndrangheta in Calabria."

"The union between occult powers and the mafia is the famous “big game” that Giovanni Falcone was working on. And for which he probably died: and the real instigators of the Capaci bombing have never been found."

"As far as we have been able to ascertain, De Magistris' investigation went far beyond what has become widely known. It went well beyond the wiretapping of Clemente Mastella or the inclusion of Romano Prodi in the register of suspects. I believe that the core of the investigation was precisely the intertwining of criminal powers and other powers in the area. I believe that his case cannot be addressed without taking into account the reality in which De Magistris, often in institutional isolation, operated."

"(About the takeover of the ‘Why Not’ investigation) De Magistris calls it illegitimate, I call it unthinkable. [...] My feeling is that we found ourselves in a situation where autonomy and independence, both internal and external, reached a breaking point. We are truly in a moment of crisis for the rule of law."

"For some time now, the Constitution has been under attack in some fundamental areas. The autonomy and independence of the judiciary has been under constant siege for years, as has the principle of equality. Article 3 of the Constitution, thanks in part to an upright judiciary, has not remained an abstract principle. All the most recent bills, however, aim to create a two-tiered justice system: efficient and harsh with the weak, soft and sluggish with the powerful. A justice system that ensures impunity for the powerful."

"(About the law on the so-called “short trial”) Should be defined as: the law of the short death of trials. It is right to ensure speedy trials, but here we have a trial that remains long and only sets a maximum time limit that can never be met. We need a reform of the justice system that shortens the timeframes but gives the judiciary human and operational resources and funding. There are 30 percent shortages in the public prosecutor's offices in Palermo and Catania, cuts in funding for overtime for staff and court clerks. Hearings are only held in the morning. At full speed, the timeframes would be halved."

"Nel mondo reale il pericolo principale non è rappresentato dalle forze della natura, ma [...] dalla violenza dell'attuale globalizzazione neoliberista. Anzi la natura stessa è vittima di questo processo se è vero, come ricorda il biologo Edward O. Wilson, che le specie stanno scomparendo con una velocità di tre all'ora."

"Il ragazzo morto non era uno dei nostri, era un black block."

"We had prepared a plan in recent days (to deal with COVID-19), because it was clear what has happened could somehow happen."

"I choose to change things from within. That is probably more difficult, it is longer and more complicated but it is a more concrete solution. To work from within to change monetary, financial, agricultural, commercial, industrial policies. We are growing, and we are allying with other European countries to change the E.U. from within. If we leave, it would be the end of hope."

"Si vous demandez à tout mathématicien si dans son esprit il fait une distinction les théories de l'élasticité et celles de l'électrodynamique, il vous dira qu'il n'en fait pas, car les types de équations différentielles qu'il rencontre, et les méthodes qu'il doit employer pour résoudre les problèmes qui se présentent, sont tout à les mêmes dans le deux cas. (If you ask any mathematician if in his mind he makes a distinction between the theories of elasticity and those of electrodynamics, he will tell you that he does not, because the types of differential equations he encounters, and the methods which he must employ to solve the problems which arise, are all the same in the two cases.)"

"I did not hesitate at the Congress of Mathematicians at Paris to call the nineteenth century the century of the theory of functions, as the eighteenth century might have been called that of infinitesimal calculus."

"On my way home in May 1932, when I stopped in Rome to see Vito Volterra and explained my 92 Andre Weil formula to him, he jumped up out of his chair and ran to the back of the apartment, crying to his wife: "Virginia! Virginia! Il signor Weil ha dimostrato un gran bel teorema!" ("Mr. Weil has proved a very beautiful theorem!")"

"He and Benedetto Croce actively attacked the regime from their seats in the Senate. After 1930 Volterra was dismissed from the University and stripped of his membership in all Italian scientific societies. The same thing later happened to Levi-Civita. To the honor of the Santa Sede, he and Volterra (both of whom were Jews) were soon thereafter appointed by Pope Pius XI to his Pontifical Academy."

"It is not possible to fully understand modern world culture without appreciating its connection and its continuity with the heritage of classical culture."

"Il green pass è una patente, è una patente di libertà, che è nelle mani di chi è guarito dal covid o ha fatto i tamponi o, ancor meglio, ha fatto il vaccino. (...) se non hai la patente non puoi, non potrai lavorare, non potrai accedere ai luoghi di socializzazione."

"(...) aumentare agli opportunisti il costo della non vaccinazione; come glielo aumenti agli opportunisti, qual è la logica, devo dire geniale del green pass? Tu dici "o ti vaccini", no non mi vaccino – benissimo, "o guarisci", e va be' se non lo ha preso... "e allora ti fai i tamponi". I tamponi sono un costo psichico – il fatto di infilare dentro al naso, fino al cervello, i cotton fioc lunghi – è un costo psichico, e un costo monetario - 50 euro, due volte 60 euro - più il costo organizzativo! Tu gli aumenti il costo; aumentandogli il costo, tu lo spingi a ridurre lo zoccolo (...)"

"[About Germany and Austria] The Grifagna Eagle | which brings two beaks to devour more. (from Verses and prose by Luigi Alamanni, edited by Pietro Raffaelli, vol. I, Florence, C.E.1859, p. XXVIII)"

"Things banned increase the desire. (from Flora)"

"[...] nor is there anything more like God | who against the offender show themselves pious. (from Girone il cortese, google.it/books?id=d6WjRUQtH2AC&pg=PA77 77])"

"The harsh necessity, the custom and the time | giving birth day by day to cunning and art [...]. (III, 863; p. 223)"

"He who wants to embrace too much, squeezes nothing. (IV, 422; p. 265)"

"[...] the little brings much greater fruit | when there is good worship, that 'much incult [...]. (IV, 427; p. 265)"

"[...] stepmother sometimes, sometimes mother | the light of day comes into human works. [...]. (VI, 97; p. 310)"

"If I could tell it in rhyme to others | The sweet sight you gave me, Love, | On the blessed day when the heart | Ice cream and cold you warmed me in first place; | Perhaps such is the person who falsely estimates | All your kingdom is only tears and pain, | Which for me freed from the common error | Of his life would put you at the top . (from Sonnet – He would hope for comfort from the verses, p. 1)"

"Amor sees me, and with him Cintia and Flora, | This one on the right hand, and the one on the left side | There've other Tuscan foot not pressed yet, | Behind the tallest and most ornate of all | He sang for Delia, and to whom she wrote her name, | Now the second time he will be praised. Let them show me the path I am taking, and how Callimachus and Philetas showed it to them, | First to have this idra adorned their hair. (from Elegia – 2 beauties, Cintia and Flora, also light it up. TO SENATOR RENATO TRIULZIO OF MILAN, p. 2)"

"Enjoy therefore the soul's beauty for yourself | Of your Muses, those alone are mine | Who have a happy soul in a double flame accustomed. | Now receive some on the mountain, where it is collected Your name, among other clear spirits; | Yes, whoever is happy or saddened by love May my sayings still be dear to me at times. (from Elegia – Two beauties, Cintia and Flora, also light it up. TO SENATOR RENATO TRIULZIO OF MILAN, p. 4)"

"Today Flora is going through the countryside; | Come, sacred Pan, to do her honor, | What else so beautiful have you not seen yet. | Nor do you take this into disdain or pain, | Vaga Syringa, who gives her the pride The nine Muses, the three Graces, and the Hours. But you, horned God, if you aim a little | I stare at her, to new wonder | Your bagpipe will fall away. (from Elegy – Flora in the countryside, p. 4)"

"O miserable one who binds the soul | In his hot desires, which always then | For him it turns red, turns white, burns and freezes. (from Elegia – He narrates the cruelty of Love, and begs him to leave him alone, p. 10)"

"How hard it is, when you show your face serenely to others, to feel sadness and boredom, and laugh and cry in your heart! (from Elegia – He protests his love to his wife even though cruel, p. 10)"

"For then my tongue understands in vain | To complain about her, even if every day | Does the heart burn with false flattery? | How I wish until the dawn comes, | Cintia, I'll stay with you the whole night, | Nor then leave me all day again! (From Elegia- He protests his love to his wife, cruel as she is, p. 11)"

"Luigi Alamanni was certainly a noble and graceful poet: and yet, with all the elegances that he has scattered liberally here and there in Coltivazione, few read the six books of his blank verses: if we take away ours who therefore look for many strange and kind ways of speaking well. (Salvatore Betti)"

"Luigi Alamanni, On cultivation, in Versi e prose, edited by Pietro Raffaelli, 2 vols., Felice Le Monnier , Florence, C.E.1859, vol. II."

"Luigi Alamanni, Verses and prose, Felice Le Monnier, Florence, C.E.1859."

"[On the request to Sandro Pertini to grant an amnesty for less serious crimes] I raised the hypothesis of amnesty not as a proposal, but as one of the measures that is usually talked about when dealing with the problem of prison overcrowding, which is a real fact of our situation."

"[On consumerism in times of crisis] I believe that distrust in the lira has pushed savers to dig up their bank accounts. Better to spend while the money has some value."

"[For the C.E.1963 general elections] Motivational confessions had explained that, in the unconscious of the average Italian, the Dc more than a Father she was a Mother, or rather a matron: the little woman of Guareschi and Candido, weighed down by the years and unsuitable to guide the search for our new frontera. Did we want to "sell" the center-left? Well, let's try that old saleswoman. And we would have noticed. From"

"[On tourism from abroad] Italy has more foreigners than anyone else, but its gain is not the greatest."

"First of all, a statement. I think I am a rather irregular reader, that is, not too methodical and far from a slave to strict habits; but in my irregularity, which is quite normal, because I am not mistaken, I am different, from almost all scholars. Anyway, here are my confessions. I read in the most varied ways, depending on the moment and occasion, the mood and nerves and therefore the mood; according to the seasons, as well as to the contingent conditions of life, for which I find myself now in the city, now in the country, today on the train, and tomorrow in my study, or in a more or less private room of a public library. Finally, they vary according to the material that can be read, the one that more than anything else perhaps decides the way and, I would say, the rhythm of reading, determining the degree of intellectual tension, that is, of adequate attention and recollection, still marking the pace, which can be a very slow pace, like a run or a flight. But I think all this happens to almost every scholar. (p. 74)"

"During the months of the school year, my readings have what I would call essentially "professional" in character, which requires me to have a certain way of reading, since they are books pertaining either to the university course or to the theses to be examined, to the articles to be written or to the work on the loom, to the book material indispensable for fulfilling that other duty of "keeping ajoined". In these cases, I read as a scholar can read, pressed by the tyrannical need to quickly test, with an unpleasant strain of nerves and brain, the printed paper that the post office spills every day on the desk of the director of the Historical Journal, of a teacher and a little, also, of a politician: books, pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, who claim their right to a reading, even if this is often reduced to a furtive and fugitive glance, or to a melancholy postponement to better times. (p. 75)"

"The best times, those of true reading, serene and collected, disinterested and, I would almost say, carefree, [are] the months of the holidays, when I am given to read in front of a wide open window, which grants me, in a delightful silence, the enchanting view of a green background at the bottom and a blue one at the top, and, between the two, the undulating line of the wild mountain. In those days I savor reading even more pleasantly, if done with voluptuous slowness, in the open air, on the grass and in the friendly shade of chestnut trees or the two old stone pines. Memories and hopes... (pp. 75-76)"

"The accusation that is not wrongly levelled at the Italian humanistic culture, of having alienated letters from reality, of having diminished their original power, of having subtracted so many forces from life, including political life, exhausting them in vain retching of aestheticism and literary mimicry, this accusation does not affect Venice except to a small extent. What was the rule elsewhere was the exception here. The new studies that in other regions aroused fanaticism and fatal fetishisms, here were appreciated only to the extent of the benefits they could bring to the homeland. Professional humanism, which was an end in itself or a means of profit, did not exist here or was a very exceptional case. (p. 27)"

"Girolamo Donato, returning from Rome, where he had been ambassador to Julius II, lingered on the way to transcribe ancient Roman epigraphs; but when a pontiff, perhaps Alexander VI, dares to ask him in an ironic tone, whence the Venetians had received the privilege of the empire over the Adriatic Sea, he, the profound humanist, the eloquent orator, will not hesitate to retort with Venetian wit: "Show me your Holiness the instrument of the patrimony of St. Peter, and on the back you will see recorded the concession made to the Venetians of their dominion over the Adriatic." (p. 30)"

"[...] the Cavour was very different from what some liked to paint himself, such as the Brofferio, who dared to affirm that "he had no trace of letters". In fact, how wide that powerful mind was, open to every sense of modernity and culture, would suffice to attest to an anecdote that I recall here because it is very little known. In April C.E.1960, when he went to visit the Medici-Laurentian library in Florence, in the face of so many wonders of our classicism, both of antiquity and of the Renaissance, the great minister issued this sentence which he dedicated to the very new reformers of studies: "The Latin is like the bread that gives consistency to every food of national dignity, if we are to be of the Latin race." (p. 4)"

"The priestly robe or character, the halo of exile, the fame of eloquence, of doctrine, of austere virtue, the resurgent echoes of the Primacy, all conferred upon him Vincenzo Gioberti, on his pilgrimage [through the cities of the peninsula], as a missus dominicus, an apostle of the holiest of causes, the preacher of the most blessed of the crusades, the peacemaker for the noblest of wars. (p. 8)"

"The extraordinary qualities he possessed [Vincenzo Gioberti], explain the undiminished glory that surrounded and surrounds his name; The serious defects which he revealed explain that severity, great to the point of injustice, which some still judge, as I said earlier, his work as a politician. Certainly, this mighty apostle of the Italian cause did not – and could not have – equal to the practical qualities of a man of action and of statesman, the sense of reality that culminated, insuperably, in Camillo Cavour. He allowed himself to be guided or misled, at times, by feeling, by his own imagination and by pride, which at that time made him rigid and intolerant, almost as if by a theological habit of his mind. But in contrast to these defects, there is, above all else, a passion which dominated him all, which was his strength and his life, which purifies him and elevates in our eyes, the passion of his country. (p. 10)"

"Vittorio Cian, How do I read? Question to the most famous writers of today, Felice Le Monnier, Florence, C.E.1935, pp. 74-76."

"Vittorio Cian, La coltura e l'italianità di Venezia nel Rinascimento, Ditta Nicola Zanichelli, Bologna, C.E.1905."

"Vittorio Cian, Voci del Risorgimento. , Nuova Antologia, Rome, C.E.1911."

"Ettore Cozzani"

"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.)"

"Peaceful living together between religions and cultures is possible if from the start we know how to identify the values in which we believe and if we recognise rules that apply to everyone. The real problem which we don't address, because Europe is suffering an identity crisis."

"We have a very tough (when it's required), but open and fair dialogue with all the authorities, no hidden agendas, and at the end the day, this kind of dialogue has been very welcome by those governments."

"The sign of our coherence in our relationship with Israel is it does not depend on the difference of the changing governments in Israel but it's stable position."

"The future of prosecco in Veneto can only rhyme alongside quality and sustainability."

"I say to my opponent: "I fight your [political] faith which is contrary to mine but I am ready to fight to the price of my life so that you can freely express your thoughts". That is my position. That is, I am not a believer but I respect the faith of believers. I for example am a socialist but I respect the political faith of others and I discuss it. I debate with them, I argue with them but they are free to express their thoughts. I am democratic in that sense, really. ["Do you also respect the political faith of fascists?"] No. I fight it with a different spirit. Fascism for me cannot be considered a political faith. It sounds absurd what I say but it is so, fascism, in my opinion, is the antithesis of political faiths. Fascism is at odds with true political faiths. One cannot talk about political faith by talking about fascism. Fascism oppressed all those who did not think like it. Those who were not fascists were oppressed and therefore one cannot speak of true political faith to those who oppress the faiths of others. I fight but I fight on democratic ground."

"Well, neofascists who once again stand in the shadows and listen, I boast that I ordered the execution of Mussolini, because I and the others did nothing more than sign a death sentence pronounced by the Italian people twenty years earlier."

"Men of all political beliefs, friends and adversaries, must today recognise the immense stature of Joseph Stalin. He is a giant of history and his memory will not know sunset."

"We are dismayed at this death because of the void that Joseph Stalin leaves in his people and in humanity as a whole. Gentlemen, if you abandon your political hostilities for a moment, as I am abandoning them at this moment, you must recognise with me that this man's life coincided for thirty years with the course of humanity itself."

"Gentlemen, you will all remember the anguished hours we lived through when the Nazi avalanche rolled over the Soviet Union. The Nazi armies already glimpsed the towers of the Kremlin and the peaks of the Caucasus. Well, we felt that if, by damned chance, the Soviet Union collapsed, with the Soviet Union - don't forget this, you who are listening to me - all hopes of a triumph of freedom over the Nazi-fascist dictatorship would have collapsed. At that moment we felt that men of all political persuasions held their breath in the knowledge that their fate was tied to the fate of Stalingrad. And Stalingrad became the Valmy of the October Revolution and offered the astonished world the miracle of a resounding victory, under the leadership of Stalin. Then we understood that from Stalingrad began the victory of democratic weapons against the weapons of barbarism!"

"The fate of the Italian working people was as close to Joseph Stalin's heart as the fate of his own people and that of all the peoples of the earth. He always fought for peace, aware that those who pay the highest tribute of blood and suffering, in war, are his peasants and workers. And as a good socialist, he knew that one should not want war in order to destroy what the present society has built, but should strive to transform the old society in order to build a new one. This was his firm will; this is what he fought for in his later years. He has always rejected any provocation, he has always renounced acts of force in order to defend this good that belongs not only to his people, but to all mankind."

"He ended his day well, though too early for us and for the fate of the world. His last word was one of peace. Well, at this hour that is so sad for us, we hope that this call for peace, which reflects the will of all the workers of the earth, will not fall on deaf ears, but will be taken up by all those who hold the fate of peoples in their hands."

"Therefore, a new effort of national cohesion is required, as well as a concrete commitment to guarantee peace even outside the borders of Europe itself, to contribute to the construction of a New world order. Guaranteeing international security, preventing and overcoming crises and conflicts in near and faraway areas, is a responsibility that we cannot shirk, that we cannot - neither as Italians nor as Europeans - delegate to others."

"We have reached the point, a moment that has never been experienced since 1989: we need to reflect on the absolute need for a new, fairer and more sustainable world order."

"[Napolitano] is my best Communist friend."

"Ci sono delle donne, ma la donna non c'è."

"(On Sergio Cofferati) In truth, he immediately withdrew from the national competition. He chose not to be defeated and to start over.*For me, the magic word is consultation. It's the word I grew up with.*The Reagan right considers consultation an obstacle. The antagonistic left considers it a betrayal."

"When Berlusconi said that people don't work much in Italy, he didn't realise that since his government came to power, the number of strike hours has increased dramatically."

"There is no such thing as the political climate, it is determined."

"(On the example of turncoat) Adornato. From militant communist to Berlusconism, or rather to the height of Berlusconism."

"Bondi, Schifani, Baget Bozzo cannot say three words in a row without mentioning Berlusconi."

"(On the period of Mani pulite) There is no doubt that there were exaggerations. But the collapse of the Christian Democrats and the Italian Socialist Party was a political affair, not a judicial one. Healthy parties would not have been overwhelmed."

"The personal party model that Berlusconi invented in the end is now imitated by everyone. What are they doing if not creating lots of personal parties? Bossi's party, Fini's party, Follini's party."

"(About Silvio Berlusconi) He is very good at winning elections, but he cannot govern. He knows how to present himself, but he does not know how to administer."

"Bruno Trentin liked mountaineering. When there was a match involving Italy, he rooted against them. Trentin gave the impression of intellectual coldness. But he was very nice. If we argued, we always ended up telling a joke."

"It was impossible to socialise or joke with him. Cofferati is the trade unionist with whom I had the most difficulty on a personal level."

"The only real, systemic law that was right to pass was the Gasparri law. But it should have been done differently and as it was, it should not have been voted for."

"(About Marcello Pera) When commemorating the anniversary of Falcone's death, you cannot attack magistrates."

"Prestigiacomo has done important things for women. But she shouldn't be going to all the Forza Italia events as a showgirl."

"I don't know who D'Antoni is. I didn't even know him when he was secretary of the CISL trade union. He's someone I don't trust."

"As leader of the CISL trade union, he was one of the most powerful trade unionists of the post-war period. He then attempted to rebuild the great Christian Democratic centre. He wandered through a deserted centre, ended up in Berlusconi's unwelcoming right wing and parked himself in Mastella's party."

"[On the referendum on the sliding wage scale] As an activist, I signed, but I am opposed to the CGIL taking a position on the referendum. I do not feel that this is a contradiction."

"On the Years of lead) Italy took a big risk during those years... the battle absorbed us completely. As a result, we were unable to see the rest with the necessary clarity."

"Whether it makes us smile or irritates us, political satire encourages us to look inside ourselves and, more generally, at what is happening in society. [...] In any case, even an ungenerous and disrespectful attack is better than any kind of censorship. We can defend ourselves against the former, but not the latter."

"[On the 1996 elections] I want to shout out here, from my bed, the simplest and most important lesson I have learned from my experience: never stop seeking solutions through agreement."

"(Speech delivered on 16 March 1978, during the general strike following the via Fani ambush) [...] But on this day of mourning, a dramatic moment in the life of our country, we must not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by emotion. We must oppose inhuman violence with reason and a determined will not to bow to the blackmail of murderers, enemies of democracy and freedom in our country. There is talk of civil war. We have known such things, but in this case we are not faced with the struggle of one part, albeit small, of a people against another part. That is not the case. We are faced with a handful of professional terrorists who are attacking our institutions and our freedoms, we are faced with a small group of murderers who are attacking the institutions of Italian democracy; it is true, however, and we must take advantage of this circumstance to reflect on the reality that around this tiny band of ferocious criminals there is a certain layer of acquiescent, passive people who, if nothing else, are morally disengaged or even sympathise with the criminals, with the terrorists, or who stand by and watch. This is not the time to stand by and watch, friends in Rome. At this moment, in this trial, we cannot stand by passively in the face of the destruction that is being attempted against the institutions, democracy, freedom and fundamental values of civil coexistence that we have won through our struggle."

"Natta is not Berlinguer, as is only right. I appreciate him for his idea of a secular, non-dogmatic character, free from party schemes and sacred cows."

"He was terrified of divisions within the union. And he theorised autonomy from political parties. Now that political parties no longer exist, this may seem like a dated discussion, but it is not."

"(About the entry of Italy in the European Union) Who can forget ‘the line of sacrifice’? I have always thought that it was more disastrous for the movement than the historic compromise itself. It was suicide. Lama may not admit it, but that was a gift that Confindustria could not even have dreamed of."

"The talented and loyal communist secretary of the CGIL trade union, Luciano Lama, made a mistake when he tried to enter the University of Rome protected by his security detail on 17 February 1977, which inevitably looked like a foreign invasion. But it was not the extreme slogans of madness and violence shouted at him by the Roman Autonomists that defeated him. What defeated him, proving beyond doubt that he was the wrong man in the wrong place, was the slogan scrawled on the university walls by the metropolitan Indians: ‘The Lamas belong in Tibet’. It was not force that forced Lama to give up, but irony."

"Luciano Lama was secretary general of the CGIL trade union at a time when terrorism was a particularly aggressive cancer in Italian society. He had the merit and great courage – together with others – to take the CGIL against political violence and terrorism. He was a true moral authority in this country, a role that – ungenerously – was not fully recognised."

"Luciano Lama had a great mentor in Di Vittorio: accompanying him on his numerous trips, he got to know the reality of southern Italy and understood the importance of direct contact with the masses."

"For Luciano Lama, negotiation was at the heart of the trade unionist's job. Sometimes Carniti, then general secretary of the CISL, and I were more inclined to break off negotiations. He would say to us: ‘Breaking off is easy, rebuilding is much more complicated. We must always negotiate. Even if an entrepreneur comes to you and offers you your wife in exchange, as a trade unionist, you must reply: let's discuss it’. A paradox, of course."

"[...] comics, perhaps out of snobbery, literary superficiality or simple indifference, are always considered second-rate, a pastime for the masses, a poor art form and therefore too often mistreated. Well, I repeat, for me this is a mistaken judgement. Example: Dino Battaglia interpreted great classics from Melville to Maupassant to Rabelais, and his work was truly a unanimously recognised masterpiece, a magnificent work."

"We must be extremely rigorous in prosecuting crimes, and equally rigorous in not allowing crimes to be exploited."

"(On the footballers' protest) You can't idolise a champion on Sunday because he wins your team a match and then forget that maybe the night before he was found drunk and fighting, and then when he and his teammates try to defend the rights of the whole profession, especially the weaker and less wealthy players, they are told they can't because they are rich and spoiled. I would have understood if they had asked for more money, but for the first time they are fighting for rights, not for material reasons: this is something new and should be admired."

"Stefano Rodotà is a high-profile candidate who is well placed to represent the country at European and international level. The work and rights that give him dignity, the value of citizenship and the foundations of the Constitution have always been an important part of his culture."

"When peace is threatened, it must be defended. The invader must be stopped. In Ukraine, there is a violent, destructive invasion of a defenceless population. Therefore, we must use all the tools that the situation calls for: diplomatic action, economic and financial sanctions against the invader. At the same time, we must help those under attack with relief measures and by strengthening their ability to defend themselves, including through military aid and the supply of weapons."

"It is one thing to reject war, because you do not promote it, encourage it or justify it, but here war is happening: Putin is waging it. We must help those under attack in every way possible, with political and military means. And this is a story we know well. Why do we not look to our past? Would we ever have freed ourselves from the Nazis and the Fascists without the use of arms? Didn't those who helped us in those years also do so with military means? I want peace. I believe in the absolute value of peace and democracy, but when it is under attack, it must be defended by any means necessary. If we do not distinguish between aggressors and the attacked, we risk making wrong and ideologically twisted choices."

"Interviewer: ‘Wasn't it a mistake [...] to claim that Biagi collaborated with both the government and Confindustria?’ Cofferati: In claiming, as I did, that there is collusion between Confindustria and the centre-right government, I expressed a political opinion. Nothing more and nothing less, nothing to do with individuals or relationships with individuals. I was and still am convinced of this. And what I said about Professor Biagi was simply an objective fact: he was the coordinator of the group that drafted the ‘White Paper’ and was also a collaborator of Confindustria. The professor's death affected me deeply; I am not affected by accusations that I consider completely unfounded. I never considered Biagi an adversary: he was a valuable expert."

"Even with the murders of Ruffilli, Tarantelli and D'Antona, terrorist madness sought to strike scholars and intellectuals in the service of the state. But this time, Biagi was killed while the confrontation and negotiations in which he was participating in an authoritative capacity were underway. This is a targeted attack on social cohesion policies, but also on the very mechanism by which social dialogue takes place. It is intended to influence the social partners involved in the negotiations. This is another reason why it is important to remain as firm as ever in the fight against terrorism, but also to have the intelligence to quickly restore social dialogue. In its physiological, natural forms: negotiation, the possibility of reaching agreements, or moving on to conflict and struggle if there is disagreement. Terrorism cannot dictate the timing, the merits or the dynamics of the debate. I think it is entirely understandable that the government should confirm its intentions on Article 18. It is equally essential that the trade unions do the same, with a critical assessment of the government's proposals and with struggle and conflict. [...] It is all perfectly normal and natural. There was a confrontation with the government that did not have a positive outcome, there was a breakdown, and the trade unions asserted their reasons with this initiative. Terrorism wants to prevent this natural process. And all those who support this attempt, more or less unconsciously, are making a serious mistake."

"[...] for the first time, an executive has proposed changes to the rights system, with an economic and social policy that is explicitly hostile to the ideas and proposals of the trade unions. Article 18 has become the symbolic reference point for all this. There is conflict, but there is nothing more ‘orderly’ than the struggles that CGIL-CISL-UIL have waged in recent months. When people talk about a ‘climate of hatred’ – referring to the trade unions – they are making statements that are out of place and have no basis in the reality of Italian society. Some attacks are not only unfounded, but literally disgraceful."

"Interviewer: The CGIL and its secretary are accused of having political motives. Of wanting to ally themselves with judges and the ‘girotondi’ (protesters). Cofferati: These are unacceptable accusations. I contest choices that I believe to be wrong on their merits; they continue to say that the CGIL is not doing its job as a trade union, that we have a political strategy. The right to criticise cannot be demonised. And there is a misguided underestimation of the role of social representative organisations. The government has a duty to pursue its objectives, but it must know that if part of the social representation does not share these objectives, a break and then conflict are inevitable. I would never dream of contesting their legitimacy to govern, but they cannot contest the legitimacy of my right to oppose them with the rules of democracy and a practice established over many decades."

"I consider this accusation not only unfounded but also offensive to this organisation and its history. The Italian trade union is an enemy of terrorists and is considered by them, not surprisingly, as one of the targets to be explicitly fought. The reason is easy to understand for those who want to see it. The CGIL, and other trade union and social organisations, fought to eradicate terrorism from Italian society, even when terrorism was strongest and most deeply rooted in society. When it tried to penetrate the world of work to gain cover and influence behaviour. It would not have been defeated in the 1970s and 1980s if there had not been a clear and unhesitating decision by the trade union to confront terrorism and violence head-on."

"Luciano Lama was secretary general of the CGIL trade union at a time when terrorism was a particularly aggressive cancer in Italian society. He had the merit and great courage – together with others – to take the CGIL against political violence and terrorism. He was a true moral authority in this country, a role that, unfairly, was not fully recognised."

"Interviewer: 'What do you think when they accuse you of wanting to strike against Marco Biagi's ideas? Cofferati: I don't think anything. It's a statement that offends me."

"This government does not merely want to break up the trade union movement, it wants to change its very nature. It began by saying that the CGIL is not a trade union but a political force: ridiculous!"

"(On the Renzi government) I think it is a centre-left government that produces policies that are unacceptable to some of its voters."

"While political representation is becoming increasingly rare because parties are becoming lighter, even fluid, according to some, resorting to the streets on major issues is becoming almost a necessary outlet for voters who no longer have places and tools through which to express their opinions. Interviewer: You mean that without mass parties, the only option left is the streets? Cofferati: The streets become the main place where people can express their ideas. Interviewer: But isn't there a risk that protest will have no effect? That it will become a mere outlet? Cofferati: That wouldn't be a bad thing or a cause for concern. A demonstration can also bring about change."

"[...] without places and subjects of mediation, conflict increases. The stronger the trade unions, the less conflict there is. The more deeply rooted a party is, the better it manages its relationship with the electorate."

"[...] the devastation of the headquarters of Italy's most important trade union is seen by workers and people as a tearing apart of their identity, of who they are, of their values. It is a deep wound, not defined by the extent of the damage, which is irrelevant. Wanting to deface a historic organisation such as the CGIL means crossing the threshold of alarm."

"Cofferati didn't do what he was supposed to do. I had even bet the newspaper on him. He was the new leader of the left and he backed out. He disappointed millions of people."

"It was impossible to socialise or joke with him. Cofferati is the trade unionist with whom I have had the most difficult personal relationship. [...] In truth, he immediately withdrew from the national competition. He chose not to be defeated and to start over."

"I am very fond of Sergio Cofferati. He is the Italian trade unionist with whom I felt most in tune when I was a minister. [...] He is contradictory, he has not been consistent with what he thought and what I believe he still thinks."

"If Cofferati had continued with reformism, he probably would not have brought three million people onto the streets, but he would have positioned himself as a point of reference for broader political alliances."

"I don't think that struggle becomes political in relation to the number of workers; it becomes political depending on its content."

"Trade unions and employers collaborate in full autonomy. In an advanced capitalist society, there remains and must remain a dialectical relationship that has moments of conflict."

"(Concernong the Renzi governement) Government decisions are made without consulting other organisations, even though consultation is, after all, a form of exchange."

"[...] there is the particularly serious problem of employment in Italy. The indisputable fact that must be acknowledged is that the blanket of available work is too small. If it covers the over-50s, it leaves young people exposed. And vice versa. Collective bargaining must therefore address, in every possible way, the distribution of available work."

"(About [[w:Luigi di Maio|Luigi Di Maio]+ and his request of reforming Italian trade unions) Di Maio's recent outburst, with his inconceivable threat directed above all at confederal trade unionism, a threat that includes the intention to reform it authoritatively if he ever makes it to Palazzo Chigi, is certainly indicative of the limits of the ‘Five Star’ leader. [...] Di Maio was the latest in a long line of people to talk nonsense about trade unions."

"Renzi is like Grillo, he is the embodiment of political inconsistency serving third-party interests. (October 16 , 2012)"

"Renzi has unbridled ambition, sometimes he speaks without thinking, he's just looking for headlines. If he doesn't moderate this ambition, he'll end up going off the rails. (April 21, 2013)"

"(About [[w:Carlo Donat-Cattin]|Carlo Donat-Cattin]]]) A life characterised by a refusal to compromise. He paid a heavy price for this conception of political dignity, was not always understood, and many friends turned their backs on him."

"With Franco Marini as secretary of the CISL, we were at opposite ends of the trade union spectrum. He was to the right of Carniti, while I challenged Trentin from the left. [...] Franco Marini represented that part of the CISL that had undergone radicalisation in the 1970s and, with the capitalist restoration of the 1980s, had gradually regained control of the organisation, progressively marginalising Carniti's supporters and normalising the FIM, the metalworkers' union, in particular. He was a true Christian Democrat, not particularly left-wing within the party, indeed quite unpopular with De Mita and Martinazzoli's wing. But he was also the expression of a popular and mass idea of trade unionism and politics that has nothing to do with what is happening today. This is why, in today's politics, he could have ended up almost on the extreme left. Not because he had changed, he was always the same, but because the whole political spectrum had shifted to the right towards business and the market."

"[Regarding the upcoming elections for President of the Italian Republic in 2013] Franco Marini turned 80 last week and is preparing for his last attempt to crown a career marked by prudence, impartiality, good neighbourliness, and always in the name of popular wisdom, of which he is considered a masterful prophet."

"Le Iene [TV program] are a bit of a cheat, but if my colleagues didn't use drugs, it wouldn't show."

"It is better for a child to stay in Africa than to be adopted by same-sex couples."

"(Responding to Silvio Berlusconi's provocation: ‘She is more beautiful than intelligent’) Evidently I am a woman who is not at his disposal."

"(On Walter Veltroni's candidacy in the Democratic Party primaries) And he would run in the name of what? Of a line with which we have already lost, in one fell swoop, government, alliances and elections?"

"Clearly, Berlusconi can no longer hold his majority together. It is a whole political phase that is coming to an end, for better or for worse. You see, Berlusconism has always been founded on ‘I am in charge here’. Now, given that the break with Fini is serious and that in the relationship with the Lega it is no longer the Cavaliere who has the ball in his hand, that method no longer works."

"Gelmini is the most cynical woman I have met in my life."

"(On the PD premier candidate's primaries) If Renzi wants to run for the primaries, he should resign from the PD, because the candidate is the PD secretary by statute. And if he is changed, then let him know that he will not be alone."

"The first results of our work show that among the names of the members of the Masonic Lodges of Calabria and Sicily, there are some who have been sentenced for 416 bis, i.e. for mafia association, and a considerable number of judicial situations in progress, defendants, remanded for trial, both of mafia crimes and of what we commonly call the spy crimes of mafia behaviour or in any case of collusion with the mafia. [...] For us, this investigation is very important, especially because we are talking about a sort of new mafia organisation that brings together pieces of the mafia, pieces of Freemasonry, the State, and the ruling classes of our country."

"Cosa nostra of Sicily and the 'ndrangheta of Calabria have from time immemorial and consistently to this day nurtured and cultivated a heightened interest in Freemasonry. [...] On the part of the Masonic associations, there has been a sort of surrender to the mafia. It is the cases, certainly the most recurrent, in which a form of mere tolerance is found that prove to be the most worrying."

"Malta has long been under observation because it has become a place where the Italian mafia operates in drug trafficking, gambling, immigration and oil trafficking: all businesses involving Italian citizens"

"The National Mourning for Berlusconi is inappropriate and misplaced. [...] I think that national mourning should be reserved for personalities who have united the country and not for those who have divided it, for people who have distinguished themselves for particular achievements, for personalities of art and culture, for those who have sacrificed their lives for the country. But I find national mourning inappropriate for a Prime Minister who was much loved but who was also capable of not being loved by others. And who was divisive on fundamental issues, such as the sense of institutions, respect for the Constitution, respect for women, the country's image around the world. Why the national mourning? Why should all the country's institutions have a flag at half-mast and Parliament be stopped? [...] We are in a phase of sanctification, carried out by its TV stations but also by RAI, which is not good for the country and does not correspond to the truth."

"Berlusconi has changed Italy a lot, but as far as I am concerned he has not changed it for the better, mainly because he has cleared certain attitudes towards women, money, and the sense of institutions. Berlusconi had a patronising attitude with all things in the world, such as women, politics, power, the relationship between public and private. He had a patrimonial relationship with all things and with all people around him. And that was unacceptable to me."

"But why does the Pd leave peace, work, the fight against poverty to others?"

"To the Pd, however, I reproach it for being too flat on supporting the Draghi government. It was right to support him, but it was necessary to be able to make it understood that the project of the left that was running to govern the country had another vision."

"The Pd needs clarity. Are they holding a congress? Let it avoid being just the election of a secretary."

"(On the appointment of the new secretary of the Democratic Party) The secretary or secretary is chosen after identifying the political community that he or she is to represent."

"I have a busy agenda since 2018, I am not a member of the P also because the PD has never shown that it needs me."

"[...] I would like us to overcome the two specular vices of the Italian Left: that of division and the minority and group tendency, and that of subalternity to the dominant liberalism thought imbued with manias of governmentalism."

"[...] with this electoral law that provides for alternating lists, if a woman accepts multiple candidacies, she knows perfectly well that she leaves the place to men."

"[...] the path of the war is creating an untenable situation for Ukrainee, for Russia and for Europe."

"(About the supply of weapons to Ukraine following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022) If I had been in parliament, I would have voted to send weapons, at least at the beginning, because an attacked country must be helped to defend itself."

"(On the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022) [...] these seven months of war tell us that the longer it goes on, the more complicated the road to a ceasefire and a possible understanding becomes. [...] I know that sitting at the table with the aggressor is repugnant, but compromise is also sought with the aggressor."

"Of course, if Rosy Bindi took the time this summer to reread the PD statute, she could not have failed to see that there is a rule preventing her from running for more than three terms. She is on her sixth."

"I have nothing personal against D'Alema, Bindi, Veltroni and the others: but they didn't make it. And so I say it, with the utmost respect and humility, but I say it: that's enough now, it's the turn of others. Their time is really over."

"I do not accept lessons in political ethics from Bindi: she is ugly, mean and a cretin."

"[Speaking of who would preside over a ‘coalition of democratic emergency ’] Rosy Bindi. A woman who represents the reaction to one of the most painful points of the cultural regression, holds a key institutional role such as that of vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies, has the right profile to lead a rapid transition to normality."

"As with the fall of other regimes, a new Resistance is needed, a new redemption and then a true, radical, merciless purge... The process has already begun and, for much of public opinion, has already ended with a conviction."

"I have read and reread all of Falcone's writings. He was a great man who saw things clearly. He did not like public prosecutors and judges being united in a single career and no longer believed in the mandatory nature of criminal prosecution, which, as it stands today, is nothing but a joke. I will say more: he would not have conducted the trials that Caselli subsequently did."

"Giovanni Gentile was a philosopher dedicated to an undertaking so powerful that it had not been seen for centuries: to conceive, shape, organise and disseminate an Italian philosophy, that is, a philosophy for Italy, a philosophy of Italy, according to a tradition of political thought that Gentile saw as beginning with Dante and ending with himself. (2004)."

"The parties must step down and raise their hands... immediately and without the cunning that accompanies the death throes of their agony. That would be a coup against democracy: trying to resist the will of the people. (1 February 1993)"

"Guaranteeism, like any preconceived ideology, is pernicious. (29 March 1993)"

"Judges must continue their work. No one is asking that prominent defendants receive different treatment from other defendants. (5 March 1993)"

"Revolution has strict rules and tight deadlines. (26 September 1993)"

"Berlusconi is halfway between a dapper cabaret artist and a television salesman selling kitchenware, something that would have inspired and distressed poor Fellini. (1994)"

"An ill wind is blowing across Europe. It is the idea that we just need to wait and the troubles will disappear on their own, or that we can be accommodating even to those who threaten us and we will get away with it. It is the same wind that blew in Munich in 1938."

"In Europe, the population is declining, opening the door to uncontrolled immigration and leading to a mixed-race society."

"We are committed to reaffirming the value of Western civilisation as a source of universal and indispensable principles, opposing, in the name of a common historical and cultural tradition, any attempt to build a Europe that is alternative or opposed to the United States."

"The left hates our culture and our civilisation to such an extent that it is willing to hand it over, as it is doing, to Islam. Its foreign policy is acquiescence to terrorist countries and groups; its domestic policy is free entry for all immigrants and cheap citizenship; its social policy is multiculturalism; therefore, its urban policy is to close the American base in Vicenza! Yesterday, today, always against the West. And since the West also and above all means Christianity, the left, in order to be anti-Western, has chosen anti-Christianity, that is, secularism. This is the new frontier, the new dividing line between us and the left."

"It is nothing new that Italian relativists, and not only them, try to use Europe, where relativism is dominant, to achieve their goals at the national level. It is the hypocrisy with which many speak of Europe. [...] Unfortunately, this Europe is diminished in itself, and it is from this Europe that the worst vices are imported, circumventing national sovereignty."

"In everyday language, a secular person is someone who does not believe, while a secularist is someone who believes that those who believe have no reason to believe. This is not a tongue twister. Secular people do not base their worldview on revealed faith; secularists believe that any revealed faith is meaningless, except in a trivial, private sense, like a tic or a bad habit. The former does not believe, or cannot believe, but recognises that faith is a dimension of human experience that serves a purpose, such as giving meaning to life, attributing a role to humans in the world, and interpreting evil. The latter, the secularist, denies this dimension: for them, faith is an illusion or a misunderstanding or a failure of reason."

"For Kant, there are no different religions, but rather different forms of belief in divine revelation [...] among which Christianity, as far as we know, is the most appropriate."

"(About Francesco De Martino) A great scholar and a great politician."

"I am shocked by the idea that there are still people who take seriously Popper's analysis of Plato – “that bitter enemy of freedom”, as Marcello Pera uncritically describes him – without questioning the texts, checking the quotations or comparing them. These are elementary operations. Today, these may be unknown to most people, but they cannot escape the attention of a scholar who aspires to this role or who remembers them."

"When commemorating the anniversary of Falcone's death, one cannot attack magistrates."

"There are two Pera, before and after treatment. Before, he was so punitive that he would have scared Antonio Di Pietro and caused Paolo Flores D'Arcais difficulties. Today, he is ultra-guaranteeist. Before, he was extremely secular, speaking ill of the law on fertilisation. Today, he defends it."

"Those who attack the judiciary do so to find themselves an alibi... The primary enemy is corruption."

"Mani Pulite began as a simple police operation in a case of bribery. Thanks to a fortunate combination of circumstances and the intelligence and tenacity of Judge Di Pietro, it developed into an investigation involving an entire political class. The mechanism that had protected the system of corruption until then had two pillars. The first was the belief that everyone did it and that therefore the laws had essentially fallen into disuse and only fools still felt bound by them. The second was the certainty that if, by chance, someone fell into the clutches of the law, powerful friends would protect them or, at least, compensate them. Antonio Di Pietro and his colleagues succeeded in subverting these two pillars."

"My party is called Popolare (People's Party) and I believe that the people still hold Christian values, including “thou shalt not steal”, which is one of the commandments. People saw Di Pietro as the embodiment of these values that we in the Popolare Party seek to represent, so it goes without saying that I would be delighted if Di Pietro were to join us."

"Di Pietro appeared to be someone capable of enforcing the law against bullies, a bit like Robin Hood."

"Berlusconi cannot act as a prophet of bipolarism, preaching rules that God has revealed only to him and that authorise him to contravene the rules of the Constitution. The Constitution is what it is. Berlusconi thinks that elections are held and that votes are like shares that can be put away. Instead, the people elect members of parliament, and they are accountable to the voters, not to Berlusconi."

"As a Roman Catholic, I consider homosexuality a sin, but not a crime. Mine is a moral position that does not affect the rights that must be recognised for all."

"Children who only have a mother and no father are the children of a not very good mother. And children who only have a father are not children, because a man alone can make a robot. But he cannot make children."

"Can I link Luca di Montezemolo and Pope Benedict XVI? Both condemn ethical relativism, understood as the transfiguration of the Italian art of getting by, looking out for oneself and disregarding the common good."

"Silvio is great. We do not regret the good things we have done with him, but he is the past, let's say it loud and clear. The country can no longer hold out and needs someone to show the way to the future."

"We are writing to you with a request to improve the quality of life in the Senate. The refreshment bar does not serve ice cream. We believe it would be useful to do so and we are certain that this reflects the wishes of many. Would it be possible to arrange this?"

"There is a politicisation of the judiciary that negatively distinguishes our country in the European context and shakes citizens' confidence in the judiciary. An entire political class has been swept away with a few convictions, but with many notices of investigation, sometimes with the suspicion that these were carefully calibrated to achieve political effects."

"From a political and social point of view, I am against any discrimination against gay people. But morally, I think it is wrong. However, there are many things that are morally wrong but which the law should not prosecute."

"I'm better at wooing than Berlusconi: I can prove it to you."

"(About Silvio Berlusconi) The Prime Minister has a terrible fear of women. Jokes, vulgar remarks and sports bar comments are just a way of avoiding any real engagement with that world. But the more someone acts like a bully, the more they try to reduce women to sex objects, the more it shows that they feel insecure and unable to handle the situation."

"Silvio sincerely loved his wife, and the break-up was a profound trauma that he tried to overcome in the worst possible way. Bunga bunga was his response to the pain. I heard him talk about Veronica: he didn't see her as a sexual object, she was the woman of his life, the mother of his children..."

"I haven't changed my opinion on gay people. Politically and legally, I am in favour of non-discrimination, but morally, I think what the Catholic Church thinks: homosexuality is a moral disorder. If God gave you a male body, you can never be a woman. You can never get pregnant. And pretending to be something you are not makes you feel bad; you lose your life in exchange for a fiction."

"By signing the motion of no confidence in the Berlusconi government together with Bossi, Buttiglione has shown himself to be a double-dealing fool."

"He makes one mistake after another and says incredible nonsense. He has destroyed three parties. But as a writer he is exceptional."

"As an ethical relativist, the only certainty that sustains me is not wanting and not knowing how to impose my way of life on Professor Buttiglione. He cannot say the same."

"He has the unbearable pretension of appearing to be a philosopher when he is, at most, a professor of philosophy."

"In conclusion, I would like to remind posterity – but we all know this because it is written in the history books – that Mr Buttiglione was rejected as European Commissioner by the European Parliament because of his countless statements, defined by the European Parliament as discriminatory against homosexuals. Buttiglione's words and statements over the years regarding homosexuals are not linked to ideological reasons, but to personal reasons."

"Italia, Italia! o tu cui feo la sorte Dono infelice di bellezza, ond' hai Funesta dote d'infiniti guai Che in fronte scritti per gran doglia porte: Deh fossi tu men bella o almen piu forte, Onde assai più ti paventasse, o assai T'amasse men, chi dal tuo bello a' rai Par che si strugga, e pur ti sfida a morte."

"Freemasonry is the cultural matrix of the Risorgimento and the founding fathers of the nation"

"The first definition of statesman is a man of state, therefore Musssolini is a statesman. This is stated in the Treccani encyclopedia."

"(About volleyball player Paola Egonu) I have never had any doubts about her Italian citizenship, and I am personally and wholeheartedly proud that she represents our country with her sporting excellence, but this cannot visually conceal her origins, which I am convinced she herself is proud of."

"If I see a homosexual, I'm not like Dracula with a crucifix."

"What I criticize is the exhibitionist flaunting of this taste, which often tends to override what is, in fact, the common sense of the majority. Gay Pride? If they want to hold a parade in Rome or Turin, let them do it. One might wonder why they want to show off. Gay Pride claims to be fighting for rights, but even that is debatable. Rights are not differentiated; rights are for everyone. There are no rights for gays, rights for heterosexuals, rights for blondes, for brunettes, for those with blue eyes: there are rights for people. It's exhibitionism."

"(In elementary and middle school) There were those who had spent many years in Africa, those in Morocco, those in South America; their homes were filled with ever-changing and stimulating scents. It was then that I began to think of differences in language and culture as new territories to explore."

"Quality is the story of differences."

"Carla Bruni was my classmate from elementary school through middle school. Her father was an important industrialist in the tire industry, linked to the Pirelli group. She was a smart, lively child with a great passion for music."

"I believe that classes with separate characteristics (see w:it:classi differenziali) would help children with great potential to express themselves to the fullest, and even those with more difficulties would be helped in a special way. It is not discriminatory. For students with problems, I rely on specialists. I am not specialized in disabilities."

"[...] I don't see why it is necessary to have an anti-fascist license to express one's opinions. I also claim consideration for Mussolini, who is a statesman, as were Cavour, Stalin, and all men who have held positions of state: it is the first definition of statesman in the dictionary."

"(On abortion) [...] an unfortunate necessity that women are forced to resort to. I don't think it's a right."

"[...] we know perfectly well that war exists solely and exclusively for economic interests, which are always the same, and that it is always a small number of people who determine the choices of entire populations!"

"I can't manage to be completely vegetarian. I can give up meat for months, but then I inevitably fall back into old habits. Nevertheless, I have reduced my consumption considerably, which is good from a physical, mental and political point of view. Physically, because eating less meat makes you feel better; mentally, because eating dead animals is not good for the soul; and politically, because the social and economic consequences of meat abuse are unimaginable. [...] Eating less meat is a political choice that each of us must make. It is difficult, at least for me it is, and that is precisely why legislators (the M5S environment and agriculture committees are addressing the issue with various bills) must urgently address the issue."

"Italy should treat terrorism like cancer. Cancer is fought by eliminating its causes, not by dealing exclusively with its effects."

"We should stop considering terrorists as inhuman beings with whom it is not even worth engaging in discussion. This is a complex but decisive point. In the era of drones and total arms imbalance, terrorism is, unfortunately, the only violent weapon left to those who rebel. [...] If my village is bombed by a remote-controlled aircraft, I have only one way to defend myself apart from non-violent techniques, which are the best: to load myself with explosives and blow myself up in a underground station. I am neither justifying nor approving this, far from it. I am trying to understand. Due to their nature as subjects who respond to violent actions against them, terrorists cannot be defeated by sending more drones, but by elevating them to the status of interlocutors. This is a difficult but necessary task, otherwise the phenomenon will only grow."

"Nigeria, go to Wikipedia: 60% of the territory is in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists from Boko Haram, the rest is Ebola."

"It is important for us to identify a common enemy today, and that enemy is centralised power: a sort of centralised, Northern European Nazism that is destroying us. They are creating – with the Jobs Act and the TTIP, among other things – a sort of Walmart generation, or 300 euro generation, which will produce more and more slaves. They essentially want to colonise Southern Europe."

"(After the announcement of Maurizio Lupi's resignation from his position as Minister of Infrastructure and Transports) Do you know what corruption means? It means breaking into many pieces. Corruption has broken this country into many pieces, crumbling it and guaranteeing abundant feeding troughs for a few and crumbs for everyone else. Corruption has produced cancer in the “land of fires” and the abandonment of Italy by its best young people; it has caused sleepless nights for fathers who do not know how to pay for their children's studies, panic attacks for recent graduates who do not know how to find work. Corruption has produced the tragedy of entrepreneurs who would rather hang themselves than tell anyone they are going bankrupt, and the tears of sick people forced to wait months to find a bed in a hospital. Corruption has turned Italy into a jungle where criminals obtain contracts, million-pound bank accounts, dream homes and luxury boats moored on the coasts of Liguria, Sardinia or in some port in the Gargano. Liguria, Sardinia and the Gargano, where thousands of Italians wait for crumbs from a corrupt state that cannot even protect them from the rain."

"If the poor or migrants were banks, you would have already saved them."

"(Addressed to the MPs of the Democratic Party) I would like to remind you that the Five Star Movement does not receive a single euro of public funding for political parties. Zero! What you have screwed up, and you are not even able to pay for the party headquarters in Rome. And tell that freeloader Orfini to cough up the money. Secondly, we want to know how much money the criminal Buzzi gave to the Democratic Party through Mafia Capitale and whether he was present at your fundraising dinners. Until you answer, shut up."

"(Addressed to Minister Gentiloni, on possible military intervention in Libya) A sovereign country, Minister Gentiloni, tells the truth even if it is uncomfortable, it is not something you can hide under the carpet, sweeping it under the rug and trying, as always, to tell convenient lies, as if it were methadone that you give to a public opinion that is in fact dormant, anaesthetised, accustomed to everything."

"We must not go to war in Libya because if we go to war in Libya, the only result we will achieve is to reunite terrorist factions, tribes and counter-tribes, all against Italy, which has already betrayed them once and a second betrayal would never be forgiven. So, if you want another Vietnam, go to Libya, the responsibility will be yours alone, otherwise we should not go to war in Libya, especially if there is no government of national unity."

"In this Parliament, even as subjects of the United States of America, the concept of “preventive war” has been theorised and endorsed, which is an international disgrace that has caused damage in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and everywhere else. Today, you are moving from the concept of preventive war to war “without the knowledge of the Italian people”, all without their knowledge, and we do not trust the words of the Prime Minister, who has always contradicted himself. We cannot trust your words either, but we do trust the Italian people, who are more alert than you and who know that this war would be yet another infamous war and could lead to a new Vietnam. The Italian people do not want this war."

"(About Isis) We know perfectly well who finances them, how they are financed, which war industries help them, who gives them money, but we cannot intervene because our hands are tied, because we were put there by the same powerful forces that control these international trafficking operations. It is called a conflict of interest; you are regularly in conflict of interest and never act in the interests of the Italian people. [...] If the first casualty of war is truth, the barrage of lies that are told daily about the Libyan issue show us that we are at war, and the Five Star Movement will oppose this war in every way possible."

"What is the difference today between the PD and a bank? Banks manage our money in a murky way, just like the parties that have pocketed billions in public funding by changing the name to “electoral reimbursements”. Banks then sell toxic products, taking the piss out of citizens by saying ‘don't worry, this bond is safe’, and then many people have lost all their savings. And isn't the PD doing the same thing? Isn't it selling toxic products and passing them off as safe? Isn't the Jobs Act a toxic product? Aren't the “Good School” and Bail-In toxic products? Isn't the constitutional reform made by Renzi-Boschi-Verdini a toxic product? Isn't Renzi taking us for a ride when he says, “We will abolish Equitalia”? The M5S presented the law to abolish Equitalia in Parliament, and the PD rejected it."

"(Addressed to the Renzi Government) With this agenda, which you consider populism and we consider practicality, we demand that Members of Parliament earn €5,000 gross, or approximately €3,100 net per month, which is more than enough to live a dignified life. [...] This is a different idea that we have of the country compared to you. Don't complain, though, if you no longer have consensus, don't complain if Renzi has to be defended by his security detail every day, he who said, “the people defend me”, but perhaps meant “the agent”. Don't complain anymore if they throw manure at you – and we condemn this, for God's sake – if they don't let you enter a square without bodyguards. Don't complain! We walk with our heads held high and carry on with this battle. We ask you to be part of this project, to allocate this money to small and medium-sized enterprises, because doing your duty improves the quality of life. If you want to do it well, otherwise you take responsibility, but know that when we are in those seats, as the governing force, the first thing we will do in a single day will be this cut, and seeing you as the minority that day will be a pleasure."

"Travelling is an investment in happiness."

"I want to vote... I want to vote because I can't stand them anymore... I can't stand them anymore! [...] It's thanks to the Five Star Movement that there isn't... we have channelled participation into beautiful, beautiful democratic paths! [...] I want citizens to vote!"

"The problem, and I don't know if Italians are aware of this, is that today the Bank of Italy, which is supposed to supervise private banks and prevent them from failing, is no longer a public bank, because it is controlled by the very private banks it is supposed to supervise."

"You yourselves have now become victims of a certain system because you no longer have the slightest freedom to oppose financial capitalism. Why? Because the “bankocracy” has effectively placed its people within the institutions, which is why, in the last four years alone, dozens of decrees have been passed in favour of private banks and no decrees in favour of citizens who are suffering."

"The day the Five Star Movement (but that will never happen) were to form an alliance with the parties responsible for the destruction of Italy, I would leave the Five Star Movement."

"I would like Boschi to remain in government, firmly entrenched in her position, so that the PD loses votes."

"Berlusconi is angry with the Five Star Movement because our anti-corruption law is emptying his party."

"The M5S is a phase of my life that is now over, but if they were to come back into favour, it would depend on the Movement's political agenda. Clearly, the battles that were a priority for me were not a priority for others. I consider myself a political activist. Leaving the M5S has given me a freedom that I did not have before. I believe it is my duty and right to exercise that freedom and to take political positions that are often and willingly contrary. [...] I realised that almost no one on television has the courage to take a clear stance in favour of the Palestinian people because there is a conformism that does not even exist in the United States. [...] Israel's policy towards the Palestinians is a policy of apartheid. To date, there are no two states, Letta says, but because he does not know what to say, he does not have the courage to take a stand. Didn't Foreign Minister Di Maio do the same? I told him publicly that I disagree with the Movement's foreign policy. If I were part of the Italian institutions today, I would immediately recognise the State of Palestine. There was more freedom among politicians in the first Republic than there is now."

"Responding to ‘Do you intend to found your own party?’ I haven't thought about it yet. To those who tell me to return to the M5S, I reply that I would only sit down at the table if they left the Draghi government.[...] If it does not return to political battles, it risks becoming nothing more than a party of power."

"Power may well be disgusting, as men keep telling us, but in the meantime, we want it."

"(Speaking of propaganda during the Iraq War) Television fiction seems to be gradually replacing the reality of journalistic reporting. This is necessary to prevent public opinion from rebelling and putting pressure on governments that have already once ignored the protests of the majority of their citizens opposed to war in order to engage their country in a conflict with no way out. [...] Our leaders want us to live in the best of television worlds. Unfortunately, this paradise is the hell of democracy."

"Never go against the flow, or you risk not reaching your goal."

"You must say “not” to the men who deny you power, profit, and pleasure."

"Interviewer: You have identified a “Gruber style”: blunt, even aggressive responses. Did you study your character? Lilli Gruber: I never study characters. I just try to do my job with my back straight, without professional scoliosis. I could say that when women are determined, they become annoying and castrating, but when men are determined, they become decisive and virile. I'll leave it to others to judge the “Gruber style.”"

"I have great respect for journalism and journalists who do their job seriously. One of the fundamental principles of serious journalism is to distinguish information from entertainment. These two genres should not be mixed. Journalism is one thing, entertainment is another. For too many years now, we have been accustomed to seeing infotainment on TV, which has destroyed serious journalism. Be wary of those who want to sell you reality and information by entertaining you. But what does entertainment have to do with information and journalism? Nothing, absolutely nothing."

"I felt, and still feel, the need to describe a very complex reality that is often reduced by the media to sterile clichés. This feeling has been reinforced by developments in relations with Islam since September 11, and the Iran issue is a striking example of this. Today, rather than proclaiming axes of evil, it is more important to build axes of good."

"The European Parliament is certainly a unique observatory where you often encounter the best and sometimes the worst of politics."

"In Scandinavian countries, but also in a large and important country like Germany, there are many women at the top of parties and institutions. As always, it is first and foremost a cultural problem and then a political one, which needs legislative incentives to evolve. Therefore, gender quotas, however odious from a philosophical point of view, remain a necessity for a transition period that should be as short as possible. Italy cannot afford the luxury of giving up the great resource that women represent."

"In the third grade classroom, on a day I will never forget, a nun came in and told us how evil the Germans were, that they killed ten Italians for every one of their soldiers who died, and then used the fat from their corpses to make soap. [...] And in the class, suddenly silent, a classmate pointed her finger at me and exclaimed: “You're one of them too, Gruber!”"

"(About South Tyrol) I am convinced that this land, seemingly small and peripheral compared to empires and republics, has been an important crossroads, both for the history of Europe and for that of our country."

"The idea of borders and integration is in my DNA. [...] Precisely because, as a child, I was always considered “different.” At home, I spoke German, and our family traditions were decidedly Austro-Hungarian. But you can be different anywhere."

"The commentators represent different points of view, but they share the ability to offer original and non-trivial thinking. I find them well suited to an in-depth program."

"In all democracies, starting with the American one, if someone lies about their private life, what kind of politician can they ever be?"

"Europe needs to be “fixed,” but not destroyed. For a thousand reasons, not least because it guarantees peace and democracy, two things that we, with our short memories, too often take for granted. The latest poll tells us that 8 out of 10 young Italians feel like European citizens. And that reassures me."

"It is no longer tolerable that so many important countries in the world, from the US to Brazil, are in the hands of an international group of misogynistic rednecks who harm not only women, but everyone."

"The battle for women's empowerment goes hand in hand with the battle for the survival of the planet."

"The three male “Vs”—vulgarity, violence, and visibility, the result of impotent and aggressive masculinity—must be replaced by empathy, diplomacy, and patience. Men must be re-educated. We have read many books about women who love too much or work too hard. Well, it's time for men who love too little or work too little to go back to school. Let them learn to be more feminine."

"Girls need to know that professional life is not a game of seduction. Would I dress sexy if I had a female boss?"

"I was seen as sour or aggressive, whereas if I had been a man, they would have said I was determined."

"I am appalled by rude and sexist politicians like Salvini who campaign in their underwear or Trump who say things like “you grab women by the p***y.” How can anyone think of entrusting the country to a man who has said such a thing? At the very least, he will mistreat women and citizens."

"I still remember a press conference in Amman with King Hussein of Jordan during the first Gulf War. I wanted to ask the king why he had grown a beard, but I was afraid it was a stupid question and didn't raise my hand. A colleague asked the question shortly afterwards and the king smiled and replied that it was to mask irritation caused by the stress of war. I was ashamed of my self-sabotage."

"We women must love Europe because it is the first and, for now, the only successful example of peaceful coexistence between nations to build a project of well-being and defense of fundamental values such as social and women's rights."

"In Italy, there is also a sense of impunity: if you are a man, and especially a man in power, you are untouchable. Women do not have the courage to report abuse, or are often harsher on other women, and men are mostly complicit. We have wasted decades on useless debates, such as the one on quotas. You have to start with facts and figures: where women have been included, there has been a rebalancing and companies have improved. Often, the self-harming behavior of those who do not want to be judged as a panda category comes into play. But whether you like it or not, we are judged and treated differently from men."

"I am attacked every day on social media with intolerable sexism and vulgarity. This is also because the degradation of language becomes physical brutality and real violence. It is serious that there is no punishment: verbal violence—even anonymous violence, which is even more cowardly—must be punished immediately, and we have all the tools to do so."

"The incompetence of men in power is causing too much damage. We must no longer apologize for existing. We are more talented and more competent, and we demand power."

"Lilli Gruber, Basta! Il potere delle donne contro la politica del testosterone, Collana I Solferini, Milano, Solferino, 2019. ISBN 978-88-282-0311-7"

"The country taxed itself with a new kind of tithe, and the children of Abruzzo had to feed themselves even less than before, to prevent the blond young men of Scotland and the giant blacks of South Africa from starving to death in the caves of Genzana."

"The freedom that must be loved is [...] the freedom of others. Only on this condition is the love of freedom not a selfish aspiration, but a moral idea, indeed the sole and exclusive content of moral experience."

"Anyone who looks through the telescope and sees things differently from me is always someone who can teach me a lot, and I will read it with the attitude of a disciple who wants to understand what is not yet clear to him; if I then discuss their conclusions, I will do so with the respect and gratitude we owe to those who have paved the way for us to go further, evaluating their approach retrospectively on the basis of their arguments, not a priori by comparing their conclusions with my own. This is the attitude that my teacher Guido Calogero taught me to call ‘the will to understand’ or ‘the spirit of dialogue’."

"Take Calogero, for example: secularism is a method of coexistence between all possible ideologies and philosophies, which must respect, as a primary rule, the principle that no one can claim to possess the truth."

"Of course, Catholics have a terrible habit: thinking about the power of modernity and ignoring how this modernity, insofar as it seeks to deny religious transcendence, is currently experiencing its greatest crisis, as recognized even by certain secular writers."

"(About the book of Simone Weil entitled The Need for Roots) Of course, one cannot expect the formal perfection of other writings, but that is simply because “it is a book,” whereas the natural expression of tragic consciousness, such as Weil's, is the aphoristic form."

"(About Dante Alighieri) Of course, one cannot expect the formal perfection of other writings, but that is simply because “it is a book,” whereas the natural expression of tragic consciousness, such as Weil's, is the aphoristic form."

"It is not that Dante intends to combat the cupiditas of the clergy in order to save the autonomy of the State; rather, “it is the struggle against cupiditas, the need to thoroughly permeate public life with religion, that leads him to distinguish between the orders.” In other words, the central point of his thinking, which leads him to overcome both Guelphism and Ghibellinism, is "the intuition of the concordance between the affirmation of the autonomy of the Empire, hitherto supported by heterodox thinkers, and that of the purification of the Church affirmed by spiritual writers," which is in line with what the best interpreter of Dante's philosophy, Étienne Gilson, defines as the singular and unique feature of his thought, irreducible to any source."

"Gilson criticizes attempts to trace Dante's position back to Thomism or Averroism. For St. Thomas, every hierarchy of dignity is at the same time a hierarchy of jurisdiction, while for Dante—except for God—a hierarchy of dignity is never the foundation of a hierarchy of jurisdiction, and this corresponds to Dante's specific philosophical problem, which is not so much to define the essence of philosophy as to determine functions and jurisdictions. The principle governing this determination is absolutely irreconcilable with Thomism. St. Thomas knows only one ultimate end: eternal bliss, which can only be attained through the Church; moreover, the spirituality of the ultimate end implies that between temporal and spiritual power there is a hierarchical subordination of the means to the end. For Dante, on the other hand, man can obtain, through the exercise of political virtues, a human happiness completely distinct from heavenly bliss, even if the latter represents a higher end. The thesis of the “duo ultima” legitimizes the complete distinction between the political order and the religious order, which is equally universal to that of the Church, but autonomous and pursuing an end of earthly happiness."

"The hierarchy of dignity must not be confused with the hierarchy of jurisdiction. Such confusion, far from being homage to the order established by God among things, is a violation of it: and it is this confusion that allows “cupiditas” to prevail, which in philosophy means the opposite of justice, and in theology means the will perverted by sin. Therefore, recognition of the autonomy of orders is the authentic form of respect for the order established by God, or for the sovereignty of God himself."

"The originality of Dante lies not so much in his affirmation of the autonomy of the state, but in the religious reason for which it is affirmed. This is the path to asserting the religiosity of politics and the religious meaning of secularism."

"[...] it is within the theology of original sin that the mutual autonomy of the Empire and the Church is understood."

"The theocratic ideal is based not only, as is often repeated, even by distinguished writers and by Maritain himself, on the unity of faith, but also on the medieval non-problematization (at least not experienced problematization) of faith as truth. The theocratic ideal is unfeasible today, and not only from a prudential point of view and taking into account the actual situation, as too many theologians and, behind them, too many Catholics think; but it is unfeasible for ideal and logical reasons, because the spiritual condition of the modern age is precisely the problematization of faith as truth (how truth can become my truth). The theocratic ideal is therefore not, at least in my view, the absolute ideal of Christian politics, but its specification in relation to the spiritual situation of the Middle Ages: even if the unity of faith were to be reconstituted, the theocratic ideal would no longer be feasible, because it would be a reconstruction of unity subsequent to its problematization."

"These days, I am writing an introduction to Monarchia by Dante. It is a work that contains some very interesting insights into current affairs, including what I believe to be an unsurpassable definition of “laity”."

"(About the MOSE, in Venice) Is the water high? Put on your boots!"

"It is a very long story, in which I found myself completely alone, with my administrations, opposing this project, which was [considered] highly critical from a technical and environmental point of view by a large number of experts."

"No one can look into another person's soul. If a person has truly lost all hope and life has become pure and simple suffering for them, we have a duty to believe them. Politicians and legislators must act on the basis of their own convictions, but they must also be able to draft laws that respect the inalienable freedom of the individual. Our culture has elevated freedom to the highest criterion, and a decision contrary to freedom would have no basis. First of all, it must be verified with the utmost rigor that the request [for euthanasia] does not stem from any form of pressure or necessity, that it is absolutely free."

"We will never achieve the “truth,” but the purpose of seeking its affirmation allows us to approach it, which is already beautiful in itself."

"(About Pontius Pilate) He was neither impartial nor democratic. And he could not understand Jesus."

"Corriere della Sera, July 5, 2007."

"What are we facing today? A mass of individuals who are anything but liquid: they are gaseous! Individuals who, with the disappearance of all forms of social, union, corporate, and political aggregation, find themselves alone. This is what is new. This is what creates the social base for the Trumps, the Le Pens, the Salvinis, and the Grillos. At the root of it all is not only the impoverishment and downgrading of the middle class: there is also mass individualization."

"The more the metropolitan “nervous network” expands, the more it devours the surrounding territory, the more its ‘spirit’ seems to be lost; the more “powerful” it becomes, the less it seems able to order and rationalize the life that takes place there. The metropolitan intellect, its Nervenleben, undergoes a sort of “spatial crisis” – which is perfectly analogous to that undergone by the Leviathan State, the modern State in its territorially determined sovereignty. The powers that determine metropolitan growth are finding it increasingly difficult to “territorialize” themselves, to “embody” themselves in a territorial order, to give rise to forms of coexistence that are legible and observable in the territory, spatially."

"It is worth repeating. In the name of humanity, the most brutal atrocities have been committed – first and foremost, declaring one's enemy to be a beast. And so, in the name of equality, individuality, cultures, and destinies have been massacred. It is time to silence all the “big words” – or at least prevent the loudmouths from using them. But is it really inevitable, in order to understand the meaning of “equality,” to think of a natural essence of man, that is, to strip him of all his personality, to ‘free’ him from his history? If so, “equality” would tragically conflict with freedom. But perhaps, instead, it is legitimate to understand equality as the condition that allows us to express our individual diversity, as having equal means precisely in order to be able to freely diverge. And to be able to become ‘friends’ precisely because of, and not in spite of, this free distinction. In the ‘fatal’ term fraternité I think this should be preferred to friendship. ‘Egalité thinks of friendship as, precisely, friendship between equals; and therefore speaks of brotherhood. The equality and freedom we have mentioned, on the other hand, think of friendship that can bind even the most distant stars."

"Sgalambro was a follower of Schopenhauer, he was Schopenhauer. I don't think this critical and essentially pessimistic approach did Battiato much good, as he lost some of that irreverence, that paradoxical, ironic, sometimes even completely light-hearted energy that he had in his work, such as Bandiera bianca."

"(About the contrast between those who are in favor of civil unions and same-sex parenting and those who are against them) [...] I would like someone to explain to me what a traditional family is. Is it that of fifth-century Athens? That of Sparta? That of Rome? [...] The patriarchal family of fifty years ago? The “wife, husband, two children” family? Is that it? Is the traditional family that of the last fifty years? [...] The family is a socio-cultural product. [...] It is therefore quite clear that its concept is changing. [...] These changes [...] should take place with a minimum of [...] cultural foundation, awareness, and conscience. Not in the spirit of “We want everything” and everything that comes to mind is a “natural right” because then two “naturalisms” are opposed: the Catholic one, which is totally absurd because everything can be Christian except a ‘naturalist’; and the other one, the so-called “natural rights,” which are a phantom [...]."

"(About the COVID-19) I got the vaccine. You have to do it; you have to obey the law. Philosophers obey the law, even when they think it's completely insane. Socrates teaches us that."

"Nietzsche's assertion of the death of God is not at all as vulgar and atheistic as some might think."

"An author such as Friedrich Nietzsche has nothing to do with vulgar atheism."

"The true form of atheism, which has nothing to do with either Nietzsche or Heidegger, is the view that, in a nutshell, we are merely beings in the world: we are settled, domesticated in our worldly existence."

"The phenomenon we are experiencing in Italy is similar to that of all the historic centers of major cities around the world, where more profitable functions than residential ones become competitive."

"In Venice, there were two million tourists a year in the 1970s; now there are thirty million. And it is an irresistible pressure, a demand that will continue to grow. A few years ago, there were no Chinese, no Russians. Now there are, in droves. It will be tough. Consumption in the city is increasing dramatically."

"If we want to resist the exodus from historic centers, we must give people the opportunity to live there on equal terms with those who live elsewhere. The cost of living for those who live in the center cannot be double that of those who live ten kilometers away. Today, however, living in the center is very expensive. The tax and subsidy system needs to be reviewed, both for residents and for craft and commercial activities."

"Sometimes, I am truly amazed at how certain newspapers or politicians manage to manipulate narratives to the point of turning them upside down. I don't understand how they can transform people who care for the homeless into squatters who take homes away from others. Housing rights movements deal with public housing, which is left vacant because the system doesn't work."

"I know Hungary from its darkest place: prison. There, I was held in pre-trial detention, in harsh conditions, for 15 months. [...] Under the government of Viktor Orbán, Hungary has become an illiberal and oligarchic regime, an authoritarian ethnic state. Some even call it a “modern tyranny.” What is certain is that the rule of law and media freedom are not guaranteed. Dissent is criminalized and civil society is repressed. While oligarchs loyal to the leader have become wealthy, social and regional inequalities have worsened. Minority rights are systematically violated and racism has become mainstream. [...] This new and dangerous form of fascism represents the authoritarian variant of global capitalism in our times."

"Genoa 2001 is often remembered with pain. It was many things, and certainly also a great collective trauma. But beyond the suffering, we must also learn to cherish the memory of the extraordinary strength of that movement. That strange plural creature of the new millennium, which called itself the “movement of movements.” A movement that was ahead of its time. That pointed to the need for an internationalist alternative to capitalist globalization. That built alliances between different worlds, that united peoples beyond nationalism, that reconciled differences. With all its limitations, of course. But with enormous potential for change. We are still everywhere. Carlo lives!"

"The right wing parties does not want to create the conditions and tools that would enable people to overcome their insecurities. On the contrary, it favors dynamics of human, social, and political regression. Therefore, it is important to commit to improving material living conditions and stimulating paths of growth. [...] Solidarity, a courageous and collective force that is truly capable of changing the world, must be the beacon that helps us stay on course."

"[...] for the post-fascists in government, targeting social realities is no accident: it is a political program, combining ideological revenge with an authoritarian agenda."

"Today, the Juri Committee decided to defend my immunity and the independence of Parliament, and to reject the request for revocation made by the Hungarian regime. This is an important and positive signal. I am fully confident that Parliament will confirm this decision in the October plenary session, affirming the centrality of the rule of law and democratic guarantees. Defending my immunity does not mean evading justice, but protecting myself from political persecution by the Orbán regime. That is why its protection is essential. The Italian authorities remain free to open proceedings against me, as I myself hope and strongly request."

"There is a true communist. He wants to leave NATO, he is inspired by Lenin, he promises to expropriate banks and property owners and nationalize everything! Dear Marco Rizzo, you will never get my vote, but better true communists than disguised ones."

"World War III would begin the moment Russian tanks arrived in Kiev and at the borders of Europe. Preventing them from arriving is the only way to stop World War III."

"I am experiencing this period with great personal difficulty. I am seen as the one who supports weapons, the one who wants war. There is this strange idea that there is a country we don't care about, which is bothering us. That by being at peace, it is forcing us to do things we shouldn't do, that it is that country's fault if inflation rises. That country has been invaded. There is no angel or Devil, we are not passing judgment. No one has anything against the Russian people, there is no war between Italy, Europe, NATO, and the Russian people: there is an international coalition that is helping a country that has been attacked. We must do this, and we are doing it to prevent a crisis that began in a crazy way from exploding."

"It seems to me that we can now say that the exponential increase in migration from the African coast is also, to a considerable extent, part of a clear hybrid warfare strategy that the Wagner Group, mercenaries in the pay of Russia, is implementing, using its considerable influence in some African countries."

"The decision to join the Silk Road was an improvised and ill-advised move by Giuseppe Conte's government, which led to a double negative outcome. We exported a shipment of oranges to China, and they tripled their exports to Italy in three years."

"In reality, I was working with Vittorio Occorsio on several cases of kidnapping for ransom, including the Danesi kidnapping, the Ortolani kidnapping, the Andreuzzi kidnapping, [the kidnapping] Francisci kidnapping, and I remember perfectly well that a few days earlier he had asked me to issue several arrest warrants against the defendants; one of these defendants was a member of the P2 Lodge. He had also identified links between kidnappers, black terrorists, and members of the P2 Lodge, and had expressed his concerns. He had a great deal of experience because he had already investigated part of the trial for the Piazza Fontana massacre. At first, he had been misled, unfortunately by the secret services, but then he had got back on the right track. I also remember that on the morning he was killed, half an hour before the murder, I called him to ask his opinion on a request for provisional release that had been submitted by a defendant who was a member of P2, and he told me that he would express a negative opinion."

"(Regarding Antonio Ingroia's political candidacy}} Fairness is the first rule that a magistrate must follow. In the specific case of the former deputy prosecutor of Palermo, with an investigation involving the mafia such as the one he has just left behind, the situation is even more delicate. [...] The Sicilian magistrate's decision not only raises suspicions that the entire operation was merely a ploy to enter politics, but also risks undermining the credibility of the entire team of people who worked with him."

"The KGB was directly involved in the kidnapping of Moro. Cossiga and Andreotti knew where he was being held prisoner, but prevented General Dalla Chiesa from intervening. Falcone and Borsellino? The Gladio and the CIA were involved in those incidents. [...] The CIA was the armed wing of this policy, which sought by all means to eliminate a figure who jeopardized the security of the Western bloc and could cause communists to infiltrate the Italian government. Moreover, the CIA controlled the Italian secret services, as Maletti [former SISDE general] has publicly admitted. The CIA financed them with a budget of $500 million per year. [...] Of course, it also financed Gladio. The CIA even bought the Gladio base in Sardinia [the Capo Marrargiu training center]. [...] Yes, Cossiga and Andreotti knew. There is a document dated March 2, 1978, which I only learned about 25 years later and which I publish in my book as proof. Dalla Chiesa also learned of Moro's place of imprisonment and, from early April, wanted to intervene to free him. When the base in Via Gradoli was burned down, it was done precisely to prevent Dalla Chiesa from intervening. The general was ordered to abandon the camp, then he talked about it with the journalist Mino Pecorelli, who wrote about it. Both knew and both were killed."

"I am not a member of the M5S, but I find the attacks on Grillo exaggerated and unfair. He has denounced the paralysis and impotence of Parliament, which cannot be denied. Parliament, as the body that passes laws for the common good, does not actually exist. This is a bitter reality, not an insult to Parliament. Laura Boldrini should not take offense, she should take note. I would like to know what laws Parliament has passed in its first few months! And what laws it is discussing that affect young people and employment. None! The fake law that sought resources by repealing public funding of political parties is not due to come into force until 2017! Shameful!"

"The murder of Moro was carried out by the Red Brigades, but also and above all at the behest of Giulio Andreotti, Francesco Cossiga and Undersecretary w:it:Nicola Lettieri."

"President Napolitano, democracy is majority rule that respects the rights of the opposition, not tyranny of the majority that disregards the opposition, as is currently the case. Among the functions of the President of the Republic provided for in Article 87 of the Constitution, there is no provision for accusing the opposition of sectarianism. I thank the M5S for its fair and responsible opposition and its battles in defense of equal social rights, decent work, law enforcement, the independence of the judiciary, public education, and political ethics."

"The history of massacres originates in the events that took place at the end of the Second World War with the clash between two opposing blocs. [...] Our country, in the Yalta partition, became a kind of American colony, a nation with limited sovereignty due to interference from overseas. [...] New allies gathered around the hegemonic interests of the USA, happy to endorse or implement the strategy of tension in Italy. Alongside the OSS, the CIA, and the secret services, there were Ordine Nuovo, republicans, the Christian Democratic right, Vatican hierarchies, American Freemasonry, the Propaganda 2 lodge, part of the armed forces and the Interior Ministry apparatus, which were sometimes joined by openly criminal organizations such as the Mafia, Camorra, 'ndrangheta and Banda della Magliana."

"Ferdinando Imposimato, La repubblica delle stragi impunite, Newton Compton, Roma, 2013. ISBN 978-88-541-5499-5"

"(About Giorgio Gaber) He was an uncomfortable realist, he knew how to take stock of reality with the added bonus of wanting to change it, pointing out what he thought wasn't working. And I think this was mainly because he was a man of the theater. Because theater has always been about denunciation, while songs have not historically had the same function."

"(About Giorgio Gaber) Among the various memories I have of him on stage, what stands out is the profound feeling he left me with the first time I heard him shout about being communists, among other things, “because Enrico Berlinguer was a good person.” Another provocation, really, because it implied that ideologies are empty and that other things matter more. He pointed out that we often cling to them when we don't know how to define our identity, while normal things, such as being decent, can be a source of identity for man."

"I believe it would be scientifically very serious if one day we were to write the history of the Mafia as certain left-wing writers have written the history of [[Fascism]: that is, of a handful of criminals who hold in subjection a people who would not want to submit but are forced to do so by terror or a past of resignation."

"Discovering Genoa as it is described in books (and as its inhabitants love to recount it) is an enchanting experience. Firstly, because it restores that minimum of trust in the written word and oral tradition without which you would wander aimlessly in your musings on the universe. Secondly, because Genoa is truly beautiful. You look at it and it shines in its marvelous buildings, at any height above sea level. What's more, it is literally dazzling in its succession of imperial white, ocher, moss green, and reddish brown. From the Old Port to Matitone in the late morning hours, which should be scorching but are not. The streets are not noisy, because the August traffic makes everyone more civilized and carefree. All around and above you is breathtaking architecture of shapes and colors that you can stop and contemplate in ecstasy, without fear that every minute you pause will make your shirt stickier. In short, when it's not raining and there's no “macaia” (I've never understood how to spell it), Genoa is truly the most beautiful seaside city in Italy."

"When my government career came to an end, I received several offers to return to university as an associate professor. I chose Palermo because I consider it a bastion of legality, the place where I can best continue my civic and political commitment. Interviewer: What excites you most about returning? Nandoi dalla Chiesa: The desire to see my beloved places again and smell the scent of salt, jasmine, and orange blossom that I have carried with me. And then there is the sea at Mondello, the elegance of Via Libertà, and the delicious food. I know that many things have changed since my high school and military service days, but many others have remained the same. I will start again from these."

"(About the choice of Tony Renis as artistic director of the 2004 Sanremo Festival) A country that puts a man who proudly claims his Mafia friendships at the helm of the most important show on the most important public television network, a man who hosts bosses in his home, who has them brought lunch in their security cells when they are arrested, this is a country that sends a devastating message: being friends with the Mafia is not a problem, in fact it can be an advantage. And it is the same country that then puts its mafia victims on stamps and gives medals to orphans and widows."

"My earliest [memories of Palermo] are linked to the barracks on Corso Vittorio Emanuele, now named after my father, Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa. It is the headquarters of the Carabinieri Legion of sicily. At the end of the 1940s, my maternal grandfather was the commander, and I bear his name. Every summer, we would go to visit him. I remember his apartment and the stables. Then, in the late 1960s, I returned to that barracks as a teenager with my father, a Carabinieri colonel."

"In 1966, at the age of 17, I was struck by the sympathy that existed towards the Mafia. Even among my classmates at Garibaldi High School: when the boss Gerlando Alberti escaped a Carabinieri raid, many were happy and innocently took his side."

"I think that the mafia society has shrunk, but the pro-mafia society has expanded, that is, the society that manages to enter into synergy and convergence with the mafia for many reasons. In the North, we have been studying this worrying phenomenon for years."

"Nando dalla Chiesa, A teatro per la gente (pp. 63 – 64); in Andrea Pedrinelli (a cura di), Gaber, Giorgio, il Signor G. Raccontato da intellettuali, amici, artisti, Kowalski, Milano, 2008. ISBN 978-88-7496-754-4"

"Nando dalla Chiesa, Delitto imperfetto. Il generale, la mafia, la società italiana, Melampo, 2007. ISBN 9788889533208"

"The kidnapping of Moro must be reflected upon at all times because it serves as a reference point for our democracy and a constant reminder not to let our guard down against all the dangers that could undermine it."

"Events that occur at the supranational level, entities that have been established at the supranational level, often without democratic legitimacy, are capable of presenting democracies with a fait accompli. Let me give you an example: the amendment to the Constitution regarding the requirement for a balanced budget, which I must say went largely unnoticed, was not the result of a national debate, but rather the result of the European Central Bank more or less saying – and I'm simplifying here – “Either you put this clause in your constitution, or we will turn off the taps and there will be no salaries at the end of the month”. I must say that this is one of the choices I am most ashamed of having made."

"We must profoundly change the way we enforce punishment, and we are doing so: our punishment is closely linked to prison, and for a long time it was said that prison was the solution to all ills: instead, we must shift towards financial penalties because a mafia member or a corrupt individual has relatively little fear of spending a month in prison if they can pocket a few million euros; they are afraid if you threaten to take away their money and perhaps even their house: I believe we must move in this direction."

"It is fair to ask whether the Italian legal system is capable of withstanding the impact of such profound changes in the global arena, while inevitably paying the price, as mentioned above, for the increasingly narrow limits of the national dimension. The constitutional framework continues to offer important protection for fundamental rights. Contrary to the foreign-influenced suggestions that often emerge in our country, Italy is appreciated for the balance it has achieved between security requirements and the defence of constitutional guarantees, whereas other states have adopted strategies that have resulted in a sharp limitation of citizens' rights. The same can be said for the objective of maintaining and guaranteeing the autonomy and independence of the judiciary, the mandatory nature of criminal proceedings, and the regulatory provisions on appeals, which still offer important legal protection for citizens' rights. Historically created to curb the abuses of executive power, this robust legal and institutional framework now acts as a bulwark against dangerous populist tendencies that undermine the levels of legal civilisation achieved by our country."

"Today, I feel I can claim significant progress has been made in terms of certain fundamental rights and that I can represent with conviction the values for which we have worked. The law on civil unions, which has now been implemented, is inspired by the value of effective equality in secularism. We now have a law that represents a turning point in civilisation for our country. The law on assistance for people with severe disabilities who lack family support is oriented towards the value of protecting vulnerable people. The same law finally introduces, for the first time in our legal system, a generalised system of compensation for victims of intentional violent crimes. I believe this is also an important sign of civilisation. So too is the law that tackles the hateful phenomenon of “caporalato”, approved last year, a phenomenon that undermines the dignity and value of workers. It is also our duty to safeguard fundamental guarantees in the area of reception and the right to asylum."

"One of the leading contemporary scholars of law and the state, Ronald Dworkin, wrote: “Equal respect is the sovereign virtue of the political community: if it is lacking, government is merely tyranny; but when a nation's wealth is distributed very unequally, as is currently the case even in very prosperous nations, then its equal respect appears suspect”. So, if we want to give our fellow citizens the equal respect they deserve in the law and in the exercise of jurisdiction, we must take action to ensure that the nation's wealth is not distributed very unequally."

"We have known for years that Salvini had decided to fan the flames of people's fears about the wave of migration. Now we have discovered that Di Maio and the Five Star Movement are doing the same."

"The Tar must be changed without demonising it, clarifying the scope of competence of politics and that of the administrative court, which often gets involved in decisions that should be made by politicians."

"I believe that recognising that the mafia is no longer confined to its traditional areas of operation, that it acts using financial instruments, and that it infiltrates the economy, political parties and society in different contexts, is a useful sign of awareness. The mafia has become a large multinational organisation with links to criminal organisations in other countries. We need new tools to combat it."

"With the anti-Mafia code, we have strengthened the tools for attacking illicit assets, which in my opinion continues to be the main front, and we have introduced the offence of self-laundering, which allows us to intervene even when the accumulation of capital dates back a long time. However, we are still in the realm of repression."

"Interviewer: How can we combat the Mafia? Andrea Orlando: By not only focusing on how to combat the Mafia, but also on how to build social, economic, political, institutional and professional entities that are impervious to the Mafia. Antibodies are not only effective against the Mafia, but also against other phenomena such as corruption, which is increasingly being used by the Mafia to infiltrate institutions. For example, I believe it is essential to have a law regulating the functioning of political parties and lobbies."

"(About Attilio Fontana's statements about race) The words are a Freudian slip, because what he said is what many people think, and this can only be cause for concern. I believe that behind much of the xenophobic propaganda that has been fuelled in recent years there is also a racist element."

"The legal profession is a bulwark in the defence of rights and democracy. It is a fundamental voice in the protection of guarantees, especially for those who have less of a voice to defend themselves."

"The appointment of Draghi has had an initial effect. Salvini became a pro-European within 24 hours."

"Are we sure that the appointments of Fontana and La Russa as presidents of the Chambers are stumbling blocks? I don't think so. These choices are linked to the presence of Meloni at the Vox rally, where the star was Polish Prime Minister (Mateusz Morawiecki), and where there were those nostalgic for South American dictatorships and representatives of the far right. Meloni pointed to Poland and the Czech Republic as models."

"(About the Democratic Party) We are paying the price for never having seriously addressed the cultural profile of the Renzi era. Renzi has been used as a scapegoat."

"The majority vocation, as conceived by the PD, no longer exists. A radical, post-ideological wing has formed, as well as a liberal wing."

"Now, if one speaks of the limitations of capitalism, there is always someone who will label you a communist or draw antagonistic conclusions."

"The problem at the moment, in the PD, is not the difference in ideas but the silence of ideas."

"The truth is that the third pole has worked on several occasions to break up the alliance between the PD and the M5S in order to increase its position, and the M5S currently believes that going it alone will strengthen its policy choices."

"[...] we believe that it is urgent to introduce a statutory minimum wage into our labour market regulation system. Low-paid work was already a serious scourge before the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy."

"[...] As economists explain, inflation is a particularly unfair tax, because it affects those who have more and those who have less in the same way and, therefore, hurts those who have less more, a bit like the flat tax, but this inflation, due to its composition, further accentuates this characteristic."

"[...] already today, the citizenship income functions as a form of income support for many workers. Over the past three years, between 15 and 20 per cent of citizenship income recipients were people in regular employment."

"[...] the citizenship income, like any basic income, is a factor that promotes competition and stimulates wage growth, especially in the lower income brackets."

"[...] Does collective bargaining today have the same degree of pervasiveness and homogeneity that it had in the past? Studies tell us no, because poor-quality jobs are more concentrated in the south, in small businesses and in the service sector, i.e. where trade unions have weakened, where jobs have become more precarious, where undeclared work is more prevalent, and where the failure to address these disparities is one of the causes of the regional divides that characterise our country."

"[...] Is collective bargaining still capable of pushing wages upwards, as it did for a long period in our country? And the answer, again, if we look at the last thirty years, is unfortunately “no”. Negotiation alone does not push wages up, so much so that wages in Italy have been stagnant for thirty years."

"It is good to cut the tax wedge, very good indeed, but cutting the tax wedge, in itself, does not restart a trend dynamic. [...] We have cut the tax wedge on several occasions, but this has not triggered a recovery in wages."

"[...] we believe that the decision to introduce a minimum wage is not only a matter of fairness, but also a choice to identify another model of competition for our country, a choice to build an idea of development that is not based on reducing labour costs and tax evasion. This choice is one that can revitalise our economic system."

"[...] not only do we not want humiliation to enter school, we also want it to disappear from the world of work."

"I would remind the likeable and astute Mr Orlando that you, astute Mr Orlando, were Minister of Labour for about a year and a half and did nothing on this issue (of the minimum wage)."

"How can one force — I wrote — a female worker who does the triple duty of worker, housewife, and mother, not to be concerned about motherhood?"

"The rice‑weeders (risaiole), for example, whom I saw the whole day with the head under the burning sun and legs in muddy water, defenseless from the bites of leeches; poorly fed; thrown at night on the common straw of the berth. And, after forty days of toil and torment, crammed into cattle wagons for the return home: with little money, malaria in the blood, and in the bottom of the soul a revolt that welled up in their sharp and bitter songs."

"As Bersani said, we consider it legitimate that, like any defendant, Berlusconi should defend himself in court and against the trial. Of course, legitimate does not mean appropriate or fitting for the behavior of a statesman..."

"(About the Democratic Party) We are not a beached whale; instead, we must become like Nemo the fish."

"Primary elections are not mandatory. If winning meant not holding them..."

"The government will fall next week; it is clear that it is now hanging by a thread."

"I continue to believe that trade unions and politics should remain independent. Just as politics should not interfere in the decisions of trade unions, trade unions should not interfere in the internal decisions of political parties."

"We are willing to go beyond Berlusconi and work with a government led by a responsible person such as Roberto Maroni."

"(About the death of Mino Martinazzoli) We mourn the loss of a great teacher and an irreplaceable political and cultural figure. From today, we are more alone."

"Deep sadness at the passing of Scalfaro. He taught us sacred respect for institutions. He defended and served the Constitution above all else."

"We are linking the economic recovery of our country to Expo, and this means that everyone must commit themselves. The Expo will be at the heart of the recovery and will be successful if it becomes a symbol of national unity. For this reason, I guarantee the total commitment of the government."

"Italy must emerge from its state of underestimation and self-harm, and Expo will be the perfect opportunity to do so."

"I said it in the policy speech on which the Government won the vote of confidence, and I repeat it here today: the positive solution, with the return home of marines Latorre and Girone, is a commitment of our Government."

"I would like to ensure that the new party is constructed somewhat like the encyclopedia Wikipedia, somewhat like a painting by Van Gogh. As with Wikipedia, in the PD each of the hundreds of thousands of participants must contribute their own skills, which in certain fields are certainly greater than mine and those of the center-left leaders. And, like Van Gogh's paintings, the new party must have strong colors: a yellow that is yellow, a blue that is blue."

"The ISAF mission must come to a successful conclusion: we are part of a system in which everyone plays their part. No free country can shirk its commitment to stabilizing peace. Only with NATO, the UN, and the European Union can we work together to resolve the problems caused by terrorism and the absence of peace."

"The ISAF mission will end in 2014, after which our presence will be completely different, dedicated to training Afghan forces. The extent of our presence will be discussed bilaterally and, of course, in the Italian Parliament. We intend to reassure Karzai that we want to ensure a future of economic progress for the country in our mutual interest."

"Here, I want to tell everyone: I didn't write Jo Condor on my head. I learned it as a child and I'll prove it when the time comes, in the sense that we'll play offensively."

"We place our complete trust in you, President Napolitano, with the same fervor as Pope Francis when he addresses the Almighty."

"In Sochi, I will reiterate Italy's opposition to any discriminatory legislation against gay people, both in sports and outside of sports."

"[...] I hate House of Cards. I think it's the worst television drama that could possibly be broadcast. The idea of politics that comes out of it is a politics made up entirely of intrigue and terrifying things."

"I am unable to give Renzi's government a rating. Fortune favors the bold, and Renzi, who is undoubtedly talented and bold, has been fortunate."

"The Jobs Act was a step forward, but it wasn't enough: much more needs to be done in the workplace because the real problem today is unemployment, and workers who have lost their jobs need to be protected. There is still not enough protection in place. More protections need to be added."

"(About the fall of Kabul in 2021) The escape from Kabul and the tragedy of a people. Twenty years of wrong choices, in which we too, unfortunately, played a part. The West is falling apart. And we are only at the beginning of the disasters to come."

"You have a clear choice: either you're over there with Meloni and Salvini, or you're over here, and over here there's only us. The PD will be the leading party."

"The start of this legislative term is the worst possible. It begins with inflammatory rhetoric from those who won the elections. Instead of bringing peace to the country, the winners are dividing it. But those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind. I invite you to consider that this method is truly wrong. It destroys any possibility of a relationship between the majority and the opposition, which is a relationship in the interest of the country. These are choices that shift the majority even further to the right and send a message that confirms the worst concerns around Europe. I wonder what perverse logic lies behind these appointments, which go against the interests of the country."

"I don't think this majority is capable of providing the country with a stable government. They are only capable of giving the country internal strife and permanent conflict. This is the opposite of what the country needs right now. We are close to a recession, there is a war between Russia and Ukraine, and an energy crisis. We need a government that governs, not an executive that spends its time arguing."

"We must push harder on Europe for integration, to achieve more results, to be able to answer concrete questions. The decisive factor for Europe to function in an enlarged scenario is to eliminate, once and for all, the right of veto and the unanimity rule. This is the only way to work together. The right of veto is never used for the general interest. It is always a tool used to gain advantages for oneself, for short-term or personal interests."

"The issue of the agreement with the center is strategic for us. With this electoral law, there is no room for a third position. If the new pole does not join us, it will inevitably be reabsorbed by the other side. A third pole that goes it alone, or an isolated radical left like that of Vendola, would emerge from the polls with little more than a right to a platform."

"The current leadership groups have a historic responsibility; this is our last chance to avoid being overwhelmed. Losing again to Berlusconi would mean depriving the country of its last chance to avoid the impending decline. Polls and common sense suggest that the PD allied with Di Pietro and Vendola would lead to the prime minister's re-election, so we need to build something broader."

"When I think of a new Prodi, I think of someone who has to imagine three missions. To put forward a package of proposals to give young people hope again in terms of housing, work, and family. To bring investment in knowledge back to the center and build a tax system that helps those who want to do something."

"To beat Berlusconi, we will have to jump through hoops, and we cannot start off crippled. The right wing sees an alliance between us and the third pole as a smokescreen..."

"Vendola is a media phenomenon, not a well-established political figure. In the region, the radical left has very little influence and is not a decisive force."

"The 1980s were years of euphoria. The 1990s were years of austerity. The 2000s were the years of recklessness. The 2010s begin at a crossroads: decline or reawakening."

"The Italian drama is the difference between the thirty-somethings of the boom, who had children, multiple jobs, and supported their parents, and today's thirty-somethings, who have few children, no jobs, and are supported by their parents, perhaps with severance pay. We are selling off the silverware. We must give jobs to young people, aged 20 to 25. At any cost."

"Federalism is positive, as long as it is not considered a banner for Umberto Bossi to wave during election campaigns."

"I find it incomprehensible and unbelievable that Italy, and to some extent Europe, should have to follow the follies of one person Matteo Renzi. But the situation today is very different. Back then, he was the secretary of the Democratic Party, but today he is the leader of something smaller than the PSDI."

"Back in February last year, Renzi was already trying to bring down the Conte government, and the crisis was prevented by the arrival of COVID in Codogno. This is the story, proof that his criticism of the Recovery Plan is instrumental."

"It seems to me that Renzi has definitively opted out (of the Conte government) and politics is not a Neapolitan drama. The moment you decide to break away, it's over. He should ask himself why there is no leader or foreign newspaper that agrees with him and why only 10% of Italians think he is doing something intelligent."

"Conte is the head of government and he is the only one who can lead Italy this year. I don't see how he can be prevented from doing so. I'm not saying that this government has been perfect, but the main issue now is how to manage the pandemic, the economic crisis, vaccinations, and the recovery. A government in crisis carries out routine administration, while today we need a government of extraordinary commitment, and I think this is also in the interest of the opposition."

"There are three elements that Putin may not have anticipated in his reckless decision: he was confident of a quick victory, that he would encounter few problems in a territory he already considered ‘his home’, and that he would be met with a weak response. This has not been the case. The entire world is turning against him. His image, which was even positive in certain circles, is now negative for everyone."

"Here, they want to turn Ukraine into a new Belarus. Today, Putin is a new Lukashenko, a dictator. It is a watershed moment in history."

"This is a confrontation in which the principles of freedom and democracy are at stake; indeed, the European Union itself is at stake."

"Putin must now be stopped. What he has done cannot be excused by any historical reason; it is of endless gravity. It is the most significant event of this century since September 11. I make this comparison not because I consider the Russian president a Taliban, but because of the earthquake he is causing in international relations."

"(About Vladimir Putin) He has always had a connection with that historical logic, but I was surprised by his irrationality, his thinking that he could get away with it, that the Russian people would not suffer serious consequences that will last for a long time. [...] Frankly, I cannot see where such a plan will lead. And I believe that, in the long run, it will also cause Putin internal management problems in a country that has indeed restored its budget, but which has a very weak structure, with a GDP lower than that of Italy, a country that is all about energy and weapons and has failed to diversify its economy."

"We are proud to have supported the government of Mario Draghi, a government of which we were a committed and successful part. (p. 95)"

"You gave a speech that speaks to a part of Italy steeped in identity. (p. 95) (Addressing Giorgia Meloni)"

"On the subject of taxation, we understood only one word: amnesties, amnesties, and amnesties. (p. 96)"

"Let me say that the biggest disappointment is to hear that the cornerstone of your environmentalist speech was the phrase: “There is no ecologist more convinced than a conservative.” No, let me say that this is not the case: Bolsonaro is a conservative, not an ecologist; Trump is a conservative, not an ecologist; the Poles of the PiS party are conservatives, not ecologists. (p. 97) (Addressing Giorgia Meloni)"

"We have no problem with the word “merit,” but we have a very clear and simple point: the word “merit” in our Constitution is in Article 34; the principles of solidarity and equality are in Articles 2 and 3, and the point is very clear. (p. 97)"

"Winners normally always try to rewrite history, and you have tried to rewrite the history of the last decade. (p. 97) (Addressing Giorgia Meloni)"

"[...] during the election campaign, Letta was unable to give a single reason why people should vote for the Democratic Party, only reasons not to vote for the others."

"Letta is only a transitional leader for a temporary government [the Letta government] with a specific agenda. He will not be useful a second time. For the future, I imagine Gianni Cuperlo as party secretary [the Democratic Party] and Matteo Renzi at Palazzo Chigi."

"I am happy for Enrico Letta. I hope that the new Prime Minister will give a boost to the economy because we desperately need it and the emergencies we face are reflected in some very worrying figures. Continuing like this, with youth unemployment at 35 percent, means there is no hope left. Letta will certainly tackle these issues with rigor."

"They [the politicians] created this terrible climate. We simply uncovered and prosecuted acts that were defined as crimes by law. Then there are still some who are ashamed and commit suicide."

"Evidence is needed for a conviction, and only assumptions and circumstantial evidence were presented at the trial. Among these, one seemed decisive to me, but in the opposite direction to that of the prosecution. The findings showed that just below the window from which Pinelli had fallen there was a cornice that the body had chipped on impact. This proved that he had fallen on it. If it had been a defenestration, the defenestrators would have avoided that impact, which could have compromised the outcome."

"[Regarding the controversy over the publication of telephone wiretaps between the top management of Rai and Mediaset] This is not a matter of the private life of an individual, but of the management of a public information body, and therefore the rules of privacy that apply to individual citizens and their private lives cannot be invoked in this case. It would be unthinkable that this material could not be published. Do we want to go back to the Italy of 80 years ago, when fascist censorship was in force and the press was given directives to follow? This is why Article 21 of the Constitution states that journalists cannot be subject to authorization or censorship. And if someone had prevented the publication of these reports, we would be faced with a kind of censorship."

"The Master q:it:Aldo Masullo, to whom we recently conferred honorary citizenship of Naples, has left this earthly life. One of the greatest philosophers of the late 20th century, with the highest ethical standards and profound intellectual rigor, we remember his lucid political analyses right up until the last few days. A beacon for many, a solid point of reference for Neapolitan culture."

"Naples is a special city, and has been so throughout history. When the entire continent was experiencing periods of stagnation, Naples marked important accelerations in the world of culture. Its university, one of the oldest in Europe, was a point of reference when the rest of Europe was torn apart by internal wars. It is a city that never allowed the Holy Inquisition to act freely and unchallenged. It is a city that, under foreign and military occupation, liberated itself by autonomously surrendering to those who brought about the retreat of the Nazis in World War II."

"I hope that Ireland votes in favor so that the Lisbon Treaty can come into force and be a step forward for democracy in Europe, because the European Parliament will have more powers and greater importance, and it will not be the governments that are in charge but the people through their representatives in Parliament. In Ireland, Italian-Irish people also play a fundamental role."

"There is a new form of organized crime in Calabria, which is not only 'ndrangheta, which tends to manage public funds, those that have arrived, those that are arriving, and those that will arrive. This is the fundamental crux of the matter, because it is there that collusion between institutions, politics, business, and the banking system takes root, grows stronger, and increases."

"Once there were deviant services, a deviant judiciary, and even deviant journalists, but now the situation is being reversed. The few magistrates who conduct investigations, the few journalists who write, and the investigators who do their duty are the ones who are deviant."

"If half of the funds that arrived had been used, Calabria could have been a small Switzerland."

"There is a profile that stands above the political one, and that is the moral profile."

"[In 1986] [...] Juventus is a bit like the Christian Democracy party: even when it plays badly, it is always at the top, a little lower, a little higher, but always at the top."

"In recent times, Giovanni Goria has been traveling all over Italy with his traveling theater troupe to promote the biggest deal around today: the 200 trillion lire pie that concerns the health and social security sectors and is tempting to the large private groups that manage insurance companies, namely the Agnelli, Ferruzzi, De Benedetti and Berlusconi families. Goria has been traveling around promoting the merchandise. Sometimes I saw the liberal De Lorenzo with him, the man who is now Minister of Health. :*‘’"Goria propagandista d'affari‘’, ‘'La Stampa’', August 12, 1989."

"The country will have to face great sacrifices, and great sacrifices are accepted when one is guided, in having to make them, by high moral dignity. It is that strength that Alcide De Gasperi had in leading Italy out of defeat and toward democratic reconstruction."

"Democratic balance is also marked by the fact that, on the one hand, financial power controls the levers of the market economy, while on the other hand, the masses, having achieved universal suffrage, can obtain, through parliamentary representation, civil rights and therefore social rights, the welfare state."

"(About Arnaldo Forlani) We will not be late today. We must allow the secretary to go to the Pope. At least for a blessing: he needs it. In every respect."

"As Minister of Labor, he completed, with the approval of the Workers' Statute, a reform that would enhance the role of trade unions and which, in his opinion, would mark the completion of the system of constitutional freedoms in our legal system."

"The then Minister of Labor did not conclude negotiations with the metalworkers until I agreed, after several hours of resistance, to rehire a hundred workers who had been responsible for violence. I remember that, blackmailed by these conditions, I agreed to the rehiring. And the humiliation was not in accepting, or suffering, this form of blackmail, but in returning to Turin and informing the factory production managers that I had given in and that they had to rehire these hundred violent workers. That was the beginning of ten disastrous years of brutality and violence in the factory, which was only corrected after more than three thousand days."

"His lifestyle had the rare strength of a fundamental choice: the capacity for contradiction."

"His intransigence always had popular roots and connections. Alien to secular temptations, freed from instrumental conventions, he strove toward far-reaching ideals. A clear religion. His lesson: never give in."

"A man who has constantly fought to maintain a strong link between institutional structures and the needs of the world of work."

"A life characterized by a refusal to compromise. He paid a heavy price for this conception of political dignity; he was not always understood, and many friends turned their backs on him."

"I once told him, “You're gruff even when you say thank you.”"

"(Regarding the separation of careers between penal prosecutors and judges and its relatiosnhip with the "Plan for Democratic Rebirth) I am not familiar with the P2 plan. I can say that if Mr. Licio Gelli's interpretation, or rather opinion, was a correct opinion, there is no reason why it should not be followed just because he said so. Truths do not depend on who proclaims them, but on the objectivity they represent."

"(About wiretaps) Their dissemination, sometimes selective and perhaps manipulated, is a deadly tool for personal and often political delegitimization. These are substantial, almost blasphemous violations of Article 15 of the Constitution, which establishes the secrecy of communications as an interface of freedom."

"Wiretapping is absolutely essential in the fight against the mafia and terrorism; it is fundamental to understanding the movements of people suspected of serious crimes. Wiretapping mafia members helps us understand who they talk to and how they move. :*Paola Di Caro, Sì alle intercettazioni, non agli abusi, Corriere della Sera, January 18, 2023."

"Aiding and abetting does not exist as a crime; it is a creation of jurisprudence. That is, the Supreme Court, the judges, invented this rather evanescent formula, which, strictly speaking, I would call “Popperian,” is an oxymoron. Because the concept of external complicity is contradictory, hence the oxymoron, because if you are a competitor, you are not external, and if you are external, you are not a competitor. Of course, when you discuss all these things from a technical point of view, you find ideological and emotional answers. We do not want to eliminate it; we know very well that you can be a mafioso within the organization and you can be an accomplice outside the organization, but then the crime needs to be completely redefined, which at the moment does not exist either as a specific or a specific offense because it is not in the code. (July 11, 2023)"

"This book should be studied at the High School of the Judiciary (referring to the book entitled ‘'Il mostro’' by Matteo Renzi)."

"I believe that no magistrate should ever run for election, and even more so, a public prosecutor who has become famous for political investigations should not do so."

"Legitimate choices are not necessarily appropriate ones. A magistrate must not only be impartial, but must also appear to be impartial."

"The mindset of a magistrate is not that of a public administrator. [...] The idea that politics is unable to come up with a name from within its own ranks and must resort to a magistrate is a sign of a deep crisis."

"I agree with the crisis in justice. Ninety percent of our work is useless because we have Byzantine procedures for prosecuting mountains of crimes. We are grinding water and this is frustrating."

"(About Giulio Andreotti) Opposed to general ideas, pragmatic and realistic like few others, with his own streak of “Catholic Giolittism”."

"Mrs Gandhi was moving closer to the West. Even within the non-aligned countries, she was forging ever stronger ties with the world of European democracies. :*In Italy, grief but also fears for the future, “'L'Unità”', 1 November 1984"

"There can be no united Italy without the foundation laid by Garibaldi. The Garibaldi legend is, in reality, the only national thread running through our modern history."

"Solve the mystery of the Mig23 and you will have found the key to discovering the truth about Ustica."

"It will be under the aegis of the invincible Axis, the new Europe of Law, Justice, Freedom and Love. The Europe of the future, which is the goal of that bloc of countries headed by the tripartite pact between Italy, Germany and Japan."

"Yes: the case of Prezzolini was one of the most significant in contemporary culture in our country. Prezzolini embodied a constant critical and sceptical need in a world of culture increasingly tending towards conformism and orthodoxy, or rather conformism and orthodoxies."

"(About Carlo Donat-Cattin) A man who constantly fought to maintain a strong link between institutional structures and the needs of the world of work."

"(About Bettino Ricasoli) Grumpy, reclusive, wild: almost always shut away in his Brolio, from which he rarely descended, and with the calculated slowness of a sovereign. But the only one who exercised undisputed authority over all the other notables of Tuscany: “the only eminent individual known, revered and esteemed in Italy and abroad” (as Celestino Bianchi, his devoted secretary and incomparable collaborator, would say a few years later, even though he would not grant him the intimacy of “tu” in return for his many services). He was also the court of last resort in all doubtful or difficult cases, such as during the days of bloodshed and tension that followed the Aspromonte incident. (I partiti politici nella Firenze capitale, Ch. II, pp. 82-83)"

"Ricasoli embodied the concept of the modern state, which does not tolerate limitations and competition from other powers, which is based on the irreplaceable and pre-eminent values of civil morality, which replaces religious morality with military discipline, which attributes to the authority of the officer the value of priestly authority, which contrasts combatants with missionaries, the armed forces to the regular clergy, and universities to seminaries and convents. (Appendix, 1. Ricasoliana, Ch. I, p. 262)"

"If Mazzini is the prophet of the left, Ricasoli can rightly be considered the prophet of the right: among all the successors of Cavour, among all the politicians who governed the new state in the fifteen years from 1861 to 1876, among all those who appeared “moderate” and in reality carried out the only profound revolution in our history, the Tuscan baron is the only one who inspired his political action with a religious conception of life, the only one who instilled in the acts of power a secret “reformist mysticism”, such as to justify all his audaciousness and allow all his conquests. (Appendix, 1. Ricasoliana, Ch. I, p. 277)."

"Nothing more than messianic socialism, socialism that aims at a golden age, a city of sunshine, perfect justice, nothing more than such socialism repels the Christian conception. Christianity, due to its insurmountable pessimistic prejudice, cannot even conceive of the total salvation and liberation of men on earth, and by virtue of an earthly order. Hell is the punishment for violated charity. Only punishment can achieve justice. Eternal damnation is the great disciplinary force of the world. (I, I; p. 16)"

"Charity and forgiveness: this is the “socialism” of Christ, this is Christian society. In life there is not, there cannot be, absolution (only God will absolve); but there can be, there is, and there will be an amnesty, a daily amnesty. Life is a punishment (this is the meaning of original sin, the deepest interpretation of human pain): but it is a punishment that is pardoned in life and absolved in death. This is the greatest justice. (I, I; p. 17)"

"The purpose of the Church, the sole and supreme repository of revelation, remains in any case to summarise and resolve politics in religion. But the purpose of the State, of any State worthy of the name, is precisely the same, reversed: to resolve religion in politics, God in man. Every State is also a Church; political authority is necessarily moral authority; political history logically takes the form of “sacred history”. Its political ends are also moral and religious: they encompass and reabsorb within themselves all possible morality and religion. (I, I; p. 20)"

"Nothing contrasts more with the Christian conception of hope in the earthly paradise, in the kingdom of freedom and justice. None of the liberal and secularist philosophies escapes the sin of Adam. Every revolution hides the temptation of Eden. On the contrary, the only freedom left to the believer is that of ascending to God to achieve justice. (I, I; p. 21)"

"This is why the Reformation, which frees man from authority on the religious level, creates the conditions for Marxist rebellion, in that it frees men from all fear of higher forces regulating social life and launches them into a conflict without rules and without restraint, aimed at conquering humanly perfect orders. (I, I; p. 27)"

"It is the bourgeoisie that has opposed its morals to those of the Church, its philosophy to that of Catholicism, its politics to that of Christianity, within the framework of an entirely secular and earthly conception of life. The “people”, who represent the antithesis of the bourgeois spirit, the “moral protest” against the law of force, are best qualified to embody the values of Christian ethics, which alone, by devaluing the world, ideally allows for the peaceful coexistence of men on earth. It is no coincidence that “populism” is the socially permanent tendency of the Church: only the people can implement Christian teaching, which is one of renunciation and poverty. (I, I; p. 32)"

"But by abolishing property, the Church would legitimise an overly vivid hope in an overly “just” world. Catholic socialism has an insurmountable limitation: Christian pessimism. The idea of happiness is beyond this perspective. But not that of balance, with the mediation of charity. Christian socialism is ultimately nothing more than this: the search for a social balance that saves charity. (I, I; p. 33)"

"So what? Is not Christian socialism the most powerful explosive charge against bourgeois society, which is based on the idea of confrontation and the reality of luxury, enjoyment, pleasure, vain and superfluous things? When Leo XIII praises the worker, he always takes as his example “the frugal and well-behaved worker”. (I, III; p. 57)"

"The Reformation, through Calvin, had laid the foundations of capitalism, legitimising individual initiative aimed at any goal, sanctifying the effort and daring of the individual even if it aimed at greatness and domination, consecrating gain and success as signs of predestination and divine election. By rejecting the modern State and capitalism, the Papacy rejects the very principle of “struggle” that underpinned both. The new social order, conceived by Catholic socialism, resolves the struggle and dissolves the state itself. It is a challenge to Protestantism. The Church, which has always opposed the Faustian conception of life, the reduction of existence to the category of war, the idea of progress and becoming, the principle of competition, selection and class struggle, and action as the measure of the world, the Church aims to achieve its greatest victory by once again launching and imposing its message of peace, love, brotherhood, and charity. (I, III; p. 59)"

"On a historical level, what is communism if not the last heir of the Reformation, Romanticism and classical German philosophy? By definition, it is the sworn enemy of the Church. Its foundation is the state; its principle is revolution; its method is struggle; its ideal is immanence; its goal is justice. (I, III; p. 64)"

"In the eyes of the Enlightenment thinkers themselves, it was clear that the revolt against authority, the basis of their polemic, could only escape the temptations of anarchism by falling back on the contemplation of an absolute model of justice that would frame human life, giving it meaning and justification. It is the unlimited faith in the “'law”', in the equality of all before the law, that alone legitimises the function of the State and elevates it from the political to the moral plane, rightly making it “part of the heavenly”. The “general will”, the powerful idea that must justify the source of power, will coincide with a law of nature and become the very expression of natural fatality. Thus was born the “mystique of democracy”, which found its point of origin in The Social Contract and its historical conclusion in universal suffrage. Law and freedom became one and the same: absolutism no longer had any reason to exist. (II, I; p. 78)"

"Religious criticism denies mystery; historical criticism destroys legend; literary criticism dissolves creation: it is the era in which secularism reacts to ancient traditions and conventions in the name of “fully explained reason”. Salvation is sought in erudition, which demolishes prophecies and ghosts. The demands of faith are resolved in the thirst for knowledge: the problematic nature of life allows the unity of religion to be overcome. Dogma, the unity consecrated in dogma, is answered with faith in antinomy, with an awareness of multiplicity, with the torment of contradictions that are at the basis of the human spirit and are only resolved on the plane of history. (II, II; p. 91)"

"The cause of authority is sacred to the Church, inasmuch as a ray of God lives in authority. (II, III; p. 102)."

"At the end of the war, the situation was such that it would not have been difficult for us to seize power and begin building a socialist society. Most of the people would have followed us."

"[...] even in the mane of a noble racehorse, you can always find two or three lice."

"Very often, the enemies of the workers try to challenge the patriotism of communists and socialists, invoking their internationalism and presenting it as a manifestation of cosmopolitanism, indifference and contempt for the homeland. This too is a slander. Communism has nothing in common with cosmopolitanism. Fighting under the banner of international workers' solidarity, communists in every country, as the vanguard of the working masses, stand firmly on national ground. Communism does not oppose, but rather reconciles and unites patriotism and proletarian internationalism, since both are based on respect for the rights, freedoms and independence of individual peoples. It is ridiculous to think that the working class can detach itself, separate itself from the nation. The modern working class is the backbone of nations, not only because of its numbers, but also because of its economic and political function. The future of the nation rests first and foremost on the shoulders of the working classes. Communists, who are the party of the working class, cannot therefore detach themselves from their nation unless they want to sever their vital roots. Cosmopolitanism is an ideology completely foreign to the working class. It is instead the characteristic ideology of international bankers, international cartels and trusts, big stock market speculators and arms manufacturers. These are the patriots of their portfolios. They not only sell, but willingly sell themselves to the highest bidder among foreign imperialists."

"(In 1953, referring to Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin and Stalin's enemies) He had the characteristics of a presumptuous, vain and scheming professor. Like others, he had the makings of a double-dealer and traitor."

"Bordiga lives peacefully in Italy today as a Trotskyist scoundrel, protected by the police and the fascists, hated by the workers as a traitor should be hated."

"(Last words spoken in Russian, greeting the young guests of the Artek pioneer camp, a few minutes before the illness that would lead to his death) Dear friends, pioneers. I can say very little to you because, in reality, our languages are different. But, comrades, our hearts are the same. The same thoughts, the same ideals live in your hearts and in mine. There are no differences between us because we are fighting for the same goals. You and we are fighting together for the same ends. You and we are fighting together for peace, for the happiness of peoples, for brotherhood among peoples, for progress, for socialism. In this unity of ours lies the guarantee of our victory, young people, pioneers. And you and we, although we are in different conditions and with different means, are waging the same struggle. And therein lies the certainty of our success, of victory over our adversaries, of the victory of peace throughout the world, of the victory of socialism and communism. Thank you very much, dear friends."

"“'l'Unità”', 23 August 1964, p. 3."

"(From the speech at the Foro Italico on 27 September 1948, for the first time after the attack he suffered two months earlier) Comrades, I have finished. [...] Take my greetings everywhere in Italy, take them to the workers and the unemployed in the factories of Milan, Turin, Genoa, all our industrial capitals; take my greetings to the strong labourers and sharecroppers of the Po plain, to the farmers of southern Italy; take them to the professionals, to the employees who are fighting hard today for bread, a just battle; take them a greeting that will strengthen them in the struggle they must face, which tells them once again that in Italy, within the Italian people, an invincible force has arisen and lives: the force of the Communist Party. No one has yet succeeded in breaking this force, nor will they ever succeed, and it knows that it is called upon to make its decisive contribution to leading the masses of the people in a redemptive struggle, which can only end in our victory. Comrades, to work, to struggle [Communist slogans]. The dark forces of reaction, the hostile forces that have even resorted to murder to break us, these forces will not prevail. Victory will be ours!"

"(To Pietro Secchia) What did Juve do yesterday? [...] And you want to start a revolution without knowing Juve's results?"

"Since we overthrew fascism, we have made an explicit declaration that places us on the path to democratic development. We have achieved a republican constitution, in which democratic principles are enshrined, and we have always declared that we remain faithful to those principles. [One could argue that] this is not the case in other countries [under communist regimes]. This would require a lengthy discussion. Italy is a country of great intellectual and philosophical traditions. Italian thinkers were the initiators of the great modern school of historicism: we had Gian Battista Vico, Antonio Labriola, Antonio Gramsci, and Carlo Cattaneo. The starting point of modern historicist thought is concrete analysis, reality. In the Soviet Union, China and other countries, the socialist revolution took place in conditions dictated by those circumstances, by the balance of power, by war, by attacks from all enemies, and so on. We were under Fascism, an anti-democratic and anti-national regime that had deprived us of all our freedoms [...]. We had to fight that regime with all means, and we fought, even taking up arms. We have won democracy, which is an achievement of ours, of the popular movement, of the communists, of the socialists, of the advanced democrats, and also of the Christian Democrats who have democratic opinions. We are committed to continuing along this path that the Republican Constitution guarantees us. By continuing along this path, we will succeed in laying the foundations for a new society based on freedom and social justice. :*From the television programme “'Tribuna elettorale”', Rai, 14 October 1960; transcript reported in “'l'Unità”', 15 October 1960, p. 8."

"Hence the constant threat of reactionary adventure. Today, large monopolies dominate and clerical hierarchies lay down the law. Instead of having a republic based on work, we have a power based on social privilege, discrimination, corruption and the blatant wealth of a few. [...] the advantage has not gone and does not go to everyone: where large monopolies reign, the benefits of economic progress created by everyone's work do not go to everyone but only to small privileged groups [...]."

"After the dramatic days in Geno [events in Genoa on 30 June 1960], [...] now, in Reggio, there has been a massacre: five dead and dozens injured, at the hands of the police forces unleashed against a peaceful people. There is a harsh, terrible logic in this succession of events. It is the logic of the actions of a government (about the Tambroni government) whose very constitution pushes it towards violence against the democratic and anti-fascist masses. [...] In Reggio Emilia, the government, indebted for its existence to the votes and support of the fascists, sought revenge for the victory of anti-fascism in Genoa. And cynically, for this purpose, it has shed the blood of defenceless citizens. [...] Today, the country does not understand the government's actions and condemns them. It does not understand why anti-fascist demonstrations by the people should be banned and dispersed by the police with machine-gun fire. Anti-fascism is the foundation of our political system. A government that takes a stand against anti-fascism becomes, through its actions, the source of a political situation that is already unsustainable and could become catastrophic. Our hearts are filled with bitterness and grief today. We feel that it is necessary to abandon the path of repeated conflicts, clashes and massacres. We feel that détente is necessary. But the first condition for this is that the country be freed from the shameful alliance between the government and fascism and from the shame of a government based on this alliance. The spirit of the vast majority is democratic and anti-fascist. This spirit must inspire the formation and action of the new government. The longer this decision is delayed, the more serious the consequences will be."

"I am particularly proud to have renounced my Italian citizenship in favour of Soviet citizenship. I do not feel attached to Italy as my homeland, but consider myself a citizen of the world, of the world that we want united in Moscow under the leadership of Comrade Stalin. I am particularly proud to have renounced my Italian citizenship because, as an Italian, I felt like a miserable mandolin player and nothing more. As a Soviet citizen, I feel I am worth ten thousand times more than the best Italian citizen."

"(The Vatican) is the most irreconcilable and organised opponent of greater democratic transformation in Italy."

"The real problem is that economic development has so far been regulated, essentially, by the harsh law of profit, the interests of big capital and the privileged classes. The people have worked hard. The pace of work in the factories has become so intense that it exhausts a man in the space of a few years. But it has happened as with the bees of the bitter honey for which Virgil accused the profiteers of his work. Remember? You make the honey, bees, but others enjoy it. The profits of the big capitalists are sky-high. [...] Socialism is our goal. We make no secret of it. We want a new society, based on the end of exploitation, on solidarity and fraternity among all people, on their social equality, on access for all to well-being, culture and the economic and political management of power, and on peace. This is what we are working and fighting for. And today, for our country, what we want is a shift to the left, for a democratic advance, in accordance with the Constitution and the principles it enshrines, which, if applied, offer the Italian people the hope of a bright future of progress, freedom and happiness."

"We must do everything we can to encourage the occupation of the Julian region by Marshal Tito's troops. This means that there will be neither British occupation nor a restoration of the reactionary Italian administration in this region, i.e. a situation will be created that is profoundly different from that which exists in the free part of Italy [...] this directive also applies above all to the city of Trieste."

"(At the conclusion of the commemoration of Stalin on the occasion of his death, delivered in the Chamber of Deputies) The heroic life of the victorious fighter has come to an end. His cause triumphs. His cause will triumph throughout the world."

"The discussion highlighted a new problem, that private schools are becoming a second state school system."

"Our position of principle regarding the armies that invaded the Soviet Union was defined by Stalin, and there is nothing more to say. In practice, however, if a large number of prisoners die as a result of the harsh conditions, I have absolutely nothing to say about it. On the contrary. And I'll explain why. There is no doubt that the Italian people have been poisoned by the imperialist and brigand ideology of fascism. Not to the same extent as the German people, but to a considerable extent. The poison has penetrated the peasants, the workers, not to mention the petty bourgeoisie and the intellectuals; in short, it has penetrated the people. The fact that for thousands and thousands of families Mussolini's war, and above all the expedition against Russia, will end in tragedy, in personal mourning, is the best and most effective antidote. {{NDR|Response of 15 February 1943 to a letter from Vincenzo Bianco asking him to intervene with the Kremlin on behalf of Italian prisoners in Russia."

"Our Soviet comrades never put really serious and grave matters in writing."

"The communist sections in city and town districts must become centres of popular life, centres where all comrades, sympathisers and those without a party, knowing that they will find a party and an organisation that cares about their problems and will provide them with guidance, knowing that they will find someone who can lead them, advise them and give them the opportunity to enjoy themselves if necessary."

"The effort I would like to make at the beginning of this debate, which has rightly been defined as preliminary, is to identify the essential assets that the Constitution must guarantee to the Italian people, assets that cannot be ignored if we want to achieve the fundamental objective that I have tried to set and which must be either established or restored. I believe that there are three such assets: the first is freedom and respect for popular sovereignty; the second is the political and moral unity of the nation; the third is social progress, linked to the advent of a new ruling class. If we succeed in drafting a Constitution that guarantees these three assets to the nation, then we will not have created, as has been said, an interim Constitution, but a Constitution that will effectively remain as the book to be placed next to the ark of the covenant, a Constitution that will enlighten and guide the Italian people for a long period of their history. The requirements I have indicated are not, in fact, something transitory, but are permanent and concrete requirements, corresponding to the well-defined historical situation that lies before us."

"The ranks of the Christian Democratic Party are filled with masses of workers, farmers, intellectuals and young people who basically have the same aspirations as us because, like us, they want a democratic and progressive Italy in which the demands of the working classes are given priority."

"(From the commemoration of Stalin on the occasion of his death, delivered in the Chamber of Deputies) Every time a word of peace is spoken, every time an act is performed that can ensure peace, we find Stalin there."

"To fight against the left, we must also use the police."

"(About the PRI) Small mass party."

"Always remember that the insurrection we want is not aimed at imposing social and political changes in a socialist or communist sense, but at national liberation and the destruction of fascism. All other problems will be resolved by the people tomorrow, once Italy has been liberated, through free popular consultation and the election of a Constituent Assembly."

"We extend [...] our greetings and homage to our country, which we love, for whose good we have worked and fought and to which we want to give and will give, with the victory of democracy and socialism, happiness, well-being and progress, security, independence, freedom and peace. Let us move forward [...], for the emancipation of labour, for the democratic and socialist renewal of Italy, for the triumph of communism."

"Joseph Stalin is a giant of thought, a giant of action. His name will be used to refer to an entire century, perhaps the most dramatic, certainly the most eventful in the arduous and glorious history of humankind."

"Stalin spread exaggerated and false theories; he was the victim of an almost desperate perspective of endless persecution, of general and continuous mistrust, of suspicion in all directions."

"I knew what the city of Matera was like, this city where three quarters of the population, namely those men who sweat from morning to night, toil incessantly, have no home worthy of the name, live in caves, do not know what a window is, and in those caves in which they live, which were dug centuries ago, families and working animals are crammed together in incredible promiscuity. I knew that from a city where three quarters of the population live in these terrible conditions, a terrible indictment would arise against the ruling classes of our country, the social groups, capitalists, landowners and privileged classes, who are responsible for the fact that in Italy there is still a city where thousands of men and women live in these conditions."

"Everyone understands the reality of today's economic life; everyone has seen how economic life has developed in capitalist Europe, where we have witnessed forms of concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, and how this has led to social upheaval, misery, war, fascism and tyranny, which has suppressed democratic freedom. This is what we are trying to remedy. The problem cannot be solved with economic theorems; it is a real political and social problem that began and continues to develop before the eyes of the present generation, and the working classes are trying to find a solution to it."

"(About Francesco Saverio Nitti) A man of undisputed value and undisputed ability."

"We have come a long way and we are going a long way! Without a doubt! Our goal is to create a society of free and equal people in our country, in which there is no exploitation of men by other men."

"The source of the organic deficiencies of the socialist movement was also to be found in the fatalistic vision of a revolution that was supposed to come about automatically, when capitalism had reached the final stage of its maturation. (chap. II, p. 24)"

"Ideas, the great principles of world renewal, do not advance by their own means. They have no legs, said one of the classics of our thought. They advance and impose themselves when, having penetrated the minds of men and the consciousness of a class, they become a force, because the best among men, and first of all in this class, go into battle for them, face danger, sacrifice their freedom and their lives. (chap. VII, p. 69)"

"The advance of fascism towards the destruction of all forms of democracy and towards a new war was the work of the most reactionary and chauvinistic groups of the capitalist bourgeoisie. It affected the rights, interests and aspirations not only of the workers, but of the vast majority of the population, of all non-reactionary political movements, of all those who loved civilisation or peace. However, as the facts themselves demonstrated, the initiative for all these forces to collaborate in order to save peace and democracy through joint action could only be taken by the working class, which is the objective historical antagonist of the reactionary bourgeois forces. (chap. VIII, p. 76)"

"This situation gave rise to the frenzied anti-communist agitation that has oppressed Italy for more than ten years, degrading our political struggle. This agitation is, particularly for Italy, a historical and political absurdity. It is a historical absurdity because everyone knows that if it had not been for the communists, the Italians would have lacked one of the necessary guides, perhaps the most important one, in their resistance and struggle against fascism and in the struggle for liberation. It is a political absurdity because the Communist Party is not a small, negligible entity, but is followed by the majority of workers, by large sections of the population, and by a far from small part of the intelligentsia. Banning it means introducing a division into the body of the nation that disturbs and poisons the whole life of the country. (chap. XI, p. 116)"

"In this grand picture, the decisive factor was the impetus given in Italy by the founder of our party, Antonio Gramsci, one of the most original thinkers of our time, the greatest Italian of our era, for the indelible mark he left with his thought and action. With Gramsci, Marxism, freed from the parasitic distortions of positivist fatalism and vulgar materialism, regains its full value as a conception of the world and an integral vision of history. It is once again the guide for action and thought in all fields, not only in purely political research, but also in the critique of a decrepit idealistic culture incapable of helping us understand the world of yesterday and today, in the construction of a new culture and in the struggle for the renewal of society. (chap. XIV, p. 142)"

"Before beginning this course, I would like to say a few words about the term “adversaries” to avoid any misinterpretation of this term by some of you, a misinterpretation that could lead to political errors. When we speak of adversaries, we are not referring to “the masses” who are members of fascist, social democratic or Catholic organisations. Our adversaries are the fascist, social democratic and Catholic “organisations”. But the masses who belong to them are not our adversaries; they are masses of workers whom we must make every effort to win over."

"What is the stance of Mr Togliatti's neo-Europeanism? The terms in which he expresses himself are such that it can be judged rather insipid and insubstantial: they are the usual formulas of the neutralists. It is America that disturbs the peace in Europe with its presence; through the EDC, it wants to rebuild the German army and mobilise Western Europe against Eastern Europe under the leadership of German nationalists. it is therefore necessary to reject the EDC, remove America from Europe, and promote understanding and rapprochement between all European peoples, whatever their regime. Cultural, economic, political and even military agreements can be developed between them, such as the reduction and control of armaments in all European states. According to Mr. Togliatti, these are the proposals that Europeanists should make in order to gain his approval. But one should not believe that he has converted to neutralist ideas. He adopts and supports them only because they fit perfectly into the framework of the tacit and ambitious communist policy, which must always be kept in mind if one wants to understand the meaning of the extraordinary propaganda masquerades to which it dedicates itself with such tenacity. :*Altiero Spinelli, L’europeismo di Togliatti, Il Mondo, 5 January 1954, pag.1."

"The son of a primary school teacher and a clerk, [...] he had been with Gramsci in Turin during the Red Biennium and was one of the founders of the party in 1921. Having taken refuge in Russia after the victory of fascism, he quickly rose in importance to become deputy secretary-general of the Comintern. Astute, prudent, cultured and haughty, he possessed an innate ability to survive all political storms: a quality that helped him in Moscow in the 1930s. Although he was obviously a loyal supporter of Stalin, Togliatti was able to think creatively and had a strategic overview, and these merits made him stand out within an international communist movement famous for its dogmatism and fideism."

"Gramsci had greater human sensitivity, he was more spontaneous and open. Togliatti, strange as it may seem, was much more intellectual."

"(About Togliatti and what struck him about his personality) His skill, but it was something more, the way in which he managed to impose, in a dialectical sense, the presence of the Communist Party."

"The Honourable Togliatti represents ideas and programmes that differ from mine. We are two parallel lines that can only meet at infinity."

"The greatest fault of television is that it introduced Togliatti and dancers into the hearts of Italian families."

"While for Gramsci what mattered and prevailed in the revolutionary perspective was the International, Togliatti limited its scope to the Soviet party."

"I think Togliatti only understood the Resistance when we shot Mussolini in Dongo."

"How many crimes did Togliatti commit or cover up in the 1930s and 1940s? Yet he is considered part of our history. (1975)"

"What enchanted me was his language, which was both popular and understood by everyone, yet every cautious motto, pure Italian, every word an exact reflection of what he wanted to express, every word right to “stir” the hearts and minds of those who listened to him. The square was packed. The rally took place in silence, the emotion acute in everyone. The leader of their enemies, of the Lucchesi, the Bianchi, spoke like a preacher from the pulpit, calmly, with a solemn echo... such precise speech also seemed like a tribute to the people who listened there, under the small stage, and who knew and cultivated the Italian language, the dictation, and who had preserved the beautiful speech, the Italian language, through the centuries."

"Togliatti is an educated, cultured Stalinist. Unfamiliar with Russian conditions and traditions, for several years he does not see the need to extend the Russian model to the entire communist movement; then he resigns himself to it, but without being completely convinced. It is not that he disputes or repudiates the great Stalinist cuts imposed with “just” and necessary violence; it is that he does not feel the need to add terror to terror, he remains free from persecutory mania, master of his roguish instincts, normal in terms of intelligence. And it is this normality of his in a world deformed by madness or tragedy that makes him appear more democratic than he really is."

"Togliatti was hated; he was considered an enemy, indeed the enemy, the cynical and diabolically skilled calculator who, against all tradition, against the established order, against the interests of the country, against the most deeply rooted beliefs and the most respected ideals, conspired to subvert, destroy and dismantle, using the most basic passions, exploiting misery and social resentment, intent solely on implementing the directives that came to him from a foreign country."

"Togliatti was a small, cold man, sharply intelligent, with an amused smile in private, which when speaking in public could turn into scathing sarcasm."

"One day, Togliatti held a rally in Castellammare and many people went to hear him speak. The communist spoke outdoors, near the seashore, on the slopes of Mount Faito. He was sturdy and wore glasses. While he was giving his speech in the square, several thousand people gathered. They listened in silence under the sun. Togliatti spoke of how bad things were in Italy, but one fine day he and the communists would take power and everything would change, everything would be better, much better. A group of policemen arrived in red jeeps. They stopped at the corner of the street and waited motionless. No one approved. No one protested."

"Vittorio Emanuele rarely talks about politics today, but he cannot be described as apolitical. He follows the life of Italian parties from afar and has different feelings about each of them. He hates Togliatti and Nenni unreservedly, has a modest opinion of the right-wing parties, ignores the populists and the minor nuances of the Italian political rainbow, Saragattiani, Azionisti, Democrazia del Lavoro; however, he considers Pacciardi, whom he does not know personally, an adversary to be respected."

"Togliatti had a certain aristocratic air about him, a nineteenth-century taste that meant he did not always appreciate certain avant-garde artistic experiments."

"As an intellectual, Togliatti had the heroism to sacrifice his creative, philosophical and cultural potential to the demands of political leadership."

"Togliatti's greatest intellectual creation was the new party, the PCI as we know it today."

"They spoke of his ties to Stalin and his reverence, even in difficult times. In reality, he knew him little: they had met on three or four occasions. He admired him as a tough and tenacious fighter, but he understood the revelations of the 20th Congress and was shocked by them. [...] He had a keen sensitivity, a strong propensity to understand. I know that the image of him is different, but I knew him in another way. He defended himself against facts that deeply disturbed him, but his intelligence forced him to accept them as moments in the journey of civilisation."

"We loved the mountains. Togliatti was a great walker, and so was I."

"(About Togliatti's failure to participate in the Italian Resistance) I assure you that Togliatti was not far from the Resistance. He was a cold man by nature, I agree. But he hated badges, and the only one he always wanted to show off was the one given to him by the Volunteer Corps of Freedom. If he could have, he would have parachuted into northern Italy. Cold, yes, but he had utopia inside him."

"(Regarding the Yalta Memorial) It is not true that Togliatti was exploited, that the memorial was used against Khrushchev. I see no connection between the memorial and the fall of Khrushchev. The great process that would lead to this event was already underway in the USSR."

"To think that it was possible for me to make a sentimental ultimatum such as “if you stay in Russia, I'll leave you” is to ignore what our relationship was like and what Togliatti's temperament was like."

"(Regarding the attempt on his life in 1948) When, a few days after his surgery, he was allowed to read the newspapers, Togliatti wanted to read the reports of the assassination attempt. He was struck by a nine-column headline in L'Unità: “Down with the government of civil war”. I remember his comment: if they had written “Down with the Home Secretary”, that would have been a request that was not only plausible but also acceptable! And in fact, it later emerged that in the Council of Ministers, which met urgently on the same day as the attack, the Foreign Minister Carlo Sforza and his undersecretary, a very young Aldo Moro, had raised the issue of the Interior Minister's resignation."

"(Regarding the Sino-Soviet crisis) Togliatti was concerned about relations between the USSR and China, and about the situation between the party and intellectuals that had arisen after Khrushchev had taken a very rigid and harsh stance."

"Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of Pietro Valdoni's death, and we would like to recall an episode involving the great surgeon. As everyone will remember, it was he who operated on Palmiro Togliatti, saving his life after he was wounded in the head by Pallante's revolver. When he received the bill, Togliatti found it steep and accompanied the payment with these words: “Here is the balance, but it is stolen money”. Valdoni replied: “Thank you for the cheque. I am not interested in where it came from”."

"It is difficult to know what Togliatti was like, because Togliatti left no memoirs, no diary. No one ever knew what Togliatti thought, not even his partner Nilde Iotti. It can be said that he was a faithful executor of Stalin's orders. He always was, and for this reason he enjoyed Stalin's trust. [...] Interviewer: Was he a great diplomat? Montanelli: He was a diplomat in his own right, above all because he was a man who survived twenty-five or thirty years in Moscow without ending up in prison, on trial, or against the wall. Well, that makes him one of the great figures. There are few of them. Interviewer: Was he not a statesman, for example? Montanelli: He could not be a statesman because communists do not have the state in their blood; communists have the Party. Stalin was never head of state, nor even head of government; he was head of the Party. Power in communist regimes lies neither in the state nor in the government, but in the Party."

"In the history of the Italian nation, I see few men who qualify as enlightened right-wingers who not only accept but want reforms. [...] And, now I don't want to shock people, but I would say that Togliatti was also a right-wing man because of his concept of the State and power. And this shows that you can be a right-wing man even on the left."

"Per eseguire e fare come gli altri, giostrai in sulla piazza di Santa Croce con grande spesa, e grande sunto; nella quale trovo si spese circa fiorini 10 mila di sugello; e ben che d’armi e di colpi non fussi molto strenuo, mi fu giudicato il primo onore, cioè un elmetto fornito d’ariento, con un Marte per cimiero."

"Le Tem[p]s Revient."

"The Essenes, who are worth discussing briefly due to the connections or links that, according to some, connect them to modern Freemasonry, were already well known as an institution almost two centuries before the spread of Christianity. As Josephus states, the Essenes were direct and legitimate children of the Jewish religion and probably the most select part of Phariseeism, because they did not limit themselves to the dry interpretation of the scriptures, but derived the rules of life from them, so that they were not a school, but an institution intended primarily to bring men together, moralizing them through work."

"It has been said by some that Essenism gave rise to the Kabbalists and the Gnostics: the Essenes, who adapted Christianity to their old doctrines, became Gnostics: The Essenes who remained Jews became Kabbalists: thus Essenism died, giving birth to these two powerful twins: Kabbalah and Gnosticism."

"From Gnosticism sprang the Manichaeans, who had Mani as their founder and teacher. Mani, freed from his servile status by a rich widow from Persia – hence he was also called “son of the widow” and his disciples were called “sons of the widow” – handsome, bold, deeply erudite in Alexandrian philosophy, initiated into the Mithraic mysteries, full of resourcefulness and endowed with an unyielding will, he imagined a system in which pure and simple dualism predominates: Christ is confused with Mithras, the Gospel with the Zendavesta, and the result is a squalid and almost desperate doctrine, because it teaches the perpetuity of evil."

"Bacon of Verulam, one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest of the precursors of modern philosophy, with his “Instauratio magna,” created the most logical method for directing intelligence in studies and replaced this method, based solely on sensory evidence, observation of nature, and experiments, with that of Aristotle, which derived everything from reasoning. Therefore, it was said that Bacon was the first to break through the Aristotelian school, while everyone else, either out of fear or lack of ingenuity, revered it."

"Thousands of years before Christianity, the cross was a sacred emblem among ancient peoples: in Egypt, it decorated the hands of most divine statues, and in India it appeared carved above the most majestic shrines: even the temples of Ellora and Elephanta were carved into the rock in the shape of a cross, as were those of Bemares and Mathura. The cross, whatever form it took, always signified life, new life; Christians had it as a symbol of sacrifice and death; but there is no shortage of evidence that even for them it expressed the same idea that it did in the most ancient religions."

"The cross, [...], in ancient times, symbolized the junction of the ecliptic with the equator: for the initiated, it was therefore nothing more than the image of the equinoxes: the spring equinox symbolized life, the autumn equinox symbolized death: it is always the ancient legend of the sun."

"In some ancient ritual dialogues, reference is made to the secrets of the Order, which must be kept in an ark of bone—the head—or in a casket of coral—the heart—to which only the initiates have the key—the tongue—which, however, is bound by an unbreakable oath. :*Part One, Origins and Rites, p. 118."

"If the Freemasons had wanted to take a saint of the Catholic Church as their patron, they would have designated exactly who they chose. On the contrary, they remain vague: they call themselves Brothers of St. John, but which St. John, the Precursor or the Apostle Evangelist? They do not care and solemnly commemorate both of these figures, St. John of Winter and St. John of Summer."

"The Masonic year begins in March because the Egyptian mysteries were celebrated at the spring equinox and were related to the cult of the sun: in fact, although the sun is reborn at the winter solstice, it does not begin to exert its fertilizing power on the universe until the spring equinox."

"Freemasonry, if not formally, essentially dates back to ancient times: over a long series of centuries, it was always recognized as a sanctuary of good morals, a refuge for innocence, a school of wisdom, a temple of philanthropy: at the threshold of this temple, Freemasons lay down or forget their noble titles and vain pomp, because the level of equality restores each individual, in the Lodge, to the genuine conditions of his being, and Freemasons recognize and call each other Brothers."

"The more women try to assert themselves as equal to men in dignity, value and rights, the more men react violently. The fear of losing even a few crumbs of power makes them vulgar, aggressive and violent. [...] These are men who do not accept female autonomy and who, often out of weakness, want to control women and subjugate them to their will. Sometimes they are insecure and have little self-confidence, but instead of trying to understand what exactly is wrong in their lives, they blame women and hold them responsible for their failures. Gradually, they turn women's lives into a nightmare. And when women try to rebuild their lives with someone else, they seek them out, threaten them, beat them, and sometimes kill them. Paradoxically, many of these crimes of passion are nothing more than a symptom of the “decline of the patriarchal empire”. As if violence were the only way to avert the threat of loss. To continue to maintain control over the woman. To reduce her to a mere object of possession. But when the person you love is nothing more than an object, not only does the relational world become hell, but love also dissolves and disappears."

"As those who identify moral dilemmas and try to resolve them by advancing moral principles, values and norms know well, every dilemma, by definition, is dramatic, desperate and hopeless. When faced with a moral dilemma, one always makes the wrong choice; whatever decision one makes, one always ends up regretting what one has said or done. :*From a speech to the Chamber of Deputies, 9 July 2013, quoted in Chamber of Deputies – XVII Legislature – Stenographic Report of the Assembly – Session No. 49 of Tuesday, 9 July 2013 – Continuation of the discussion of the bill: Conversion into law of Decree-Law No. 61 of 4 June 2013, containing new urgent provisions for the protection of the environment, health and labour in the operation of businesses of national strategic interest (A.C. 1139-A)“”."

"It is not work, however, that kills and destroys; what kills and destroys is the exploitation of labour, the exploitation of poverty, the exploitation of despair, that is, everything that happens when the only thing that matters is the maximisation of economic profit, that absolute selfishness that no longer has anything to do with the well-understood interest that Adam Smith already spoke to us about and that leads to the maximisation of the common good."

"There are moments of profound misunderstanding that happen just like that, from one moment to the next, sometimes suddenly. Whether it is due to accumulated fatigue, a momentary lapse of attention, or simply because life is often very complicated. But ultimately, the exact reasons for this misunderstanding matter little. Let's just say it happens."

"(About the surrogacy) [...] when we are faced with a pregnancy that is altruistic, when we have clarified the difference between the principle of the non-commercialisation of the human body and its intangibility, we must also recognise, at this point, the principle of female autonomy. When a woman decides clearly, autonomously and altruistically to help a couple become parents, having already been a mother herself, having already carried a pregnancy to term, having no particular financial needs, in the name of what should we victimise her and consider that she is incapable of freely expressing her consent?"

"Unfortunately, this law is already outdated. It is a law that would have been excellent twenty years ago. It is a law reminiscent of the PACS in France, voted on in 1999. It is a law from which we should have expected more."

"[...] I will obviously vote yes to this law because it is a necessary step forward, it is needed. Now those who dare to even imagine that being homosexual means not only being different, but also being inferior to others, will be even more ashamed. [...] I ask for no triumphalism [...] because what I would like to ask on my own behalf of all homosexual people, alas, my gay brothers and lesbian sisters, is to apologise for not having been sufficiently capable of protecting and defending their equal dignity and their complete, equal and full equality."

"If a party is unable to uphold a basic principle such as equality between children, regardless of their parents' sexual orientation, then it is no longer a party with which one can identify."

"I have no victories in Parliament. I have pushed things forward as far as I could. For example, I was the rapporteur for the law on double surnames, which then stalled in the Senate. I got it voted on in the Chamber of Deputies despite hostility and objections that I didn't think would come from the left. A macho, paternalistic, archaic attitude."

"When you are a simple member of Parliament, there is always a group leader, a deputy group leader, a chamber secretary, who block you with their authority. And you can't go any further."

"It used to be easier to be a know-it-all, but now the world is so complex that anyone who claims to be a know-it-all is a poor soul."

"The French anthropologist Claude Lévy-Strauss, in his book “'The Look from Afar”', devoted memorable pages to the theme of racism, explaining the fundamental difference between xenophobia and the legitimate need for anyone to protect themselves. It is one thing to want to protect one's loved ones, one's habits, one's beliefs and, why not, one's job."

"The “forever” of love is like the “forever” of the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland: it lasts a second. (chap. 1)"

"The “right person” is not the one who will be able to calm our anxieties and fulfil our expectations, but the one who will learn to accept us as we are, with our flaws and contradictions. Even when we ourselves find it hard to bear. (chap. 3)"

"In love, as in life, you should never have too high expectations. Perhaps you shouldn't expect anything at all, since the most beautiful things always happen unexpectedly. (chap. 4)"

"Love cannot be earned. Otherwise, it would not be love. It would just be a form of barter: I give you what you ask for and you give me what I ask for. (chap. 4)"

"And it is precisely when you are no longer afraid of losing your loved one that love dies. (interlude I)"

"Feelings need privacy. Because when you reveal too much, you empty yourself. And then there is nothing left for yourself. Nothing to hold on to when evening falls and you need to rediscover that hard core that makes you unique, that reassures you. Love for life. Love for ourselves. Love for others. (chap. 12)"

"Sometimes we love the possibility that the other person seems to offer us to be “other” than the roles we play: their gestures suggest a way out of the suffocating “must be” that has allowed us to grow and move forward, but which after so many years of routine ends up being too restrictive, like an old suit that no longer fits. (interlude III)"

"Only when we listen to the noise within ourselves can we be ready to welcome the words of others. (interlude III)"

"In love, we always clash. And we start over every day. Even when we don't feel like it. Especially when we no longer feel like it. (chap. 19)"

"Everyone has their own internal music that prevents them from listening to what others say. We only ever hear what we already know. We only ever listen to what we ourselves think. (chap. 22)"

"Who knows if we really make choices in life. Who knows if the freedom we talk so much about today really exists. Or perhaps there is such a thing as destiny. A plan in which everything has already been predicted. And so you don't choose anything, you don't decide anything, you just follow the path that has already been laid out for you. And then you spend your life asking yourself “why?”. And the “whys” always remain unanswered. (chap. 25)"

"With time, we learn: the beginning of joy is right there, when we accept that the past never passes and we begin to live with disorder, after giving up on immutability and permanence. (chap. 31)"

"Many of us complain about our men, without realising that very often we are the ones who infantilise them, reproaching them for not growing up, for not being up to the task, for not being able to manage everyday life. (chap. 32)"

"How can you share your daily life with another person if you don't give them the chance to do things their own way, or even to take responsibility for not doing them? How can you live with another person if you don't accept their otherness? After all, even in love, it is always a question of otherness. He is not like us. He is not us. He is simply “other”. (chap. 32)"

"Within a few days, I had the feeling that the progressive reduction of women to body-images was accompanied by an even more serious regression, by a heavy counterattack against the equality and freedom for which women had fought so hard in the 1960s and 1970s. It is as if the only alternative to the male-dominated model of women as objects of desire were that defended by a certain reactionary ideology."

"Too often, philosophers hide behind incomprehensible, technical language. For some of them, it is a way of remaining entrenched in an ivory tower without having to confront life, people's aspirations and frustrations, everyday life, or their own physical existence. [...] When, in the name of scientific rigour, we lose touch with reality, then knowledge becomes sterile. It is no longer useful. Except to take comfort in the idea that “others” cannot understand and... too bad for them!"

"Although the spirit of the 1960s and 1970s, with its culture of equality and rights, is still with us, the view that many Italian men have of women, and which many young women end up internalising, does not correspond at all to the hopes of those years. It is women's achievements themselves that seem to be called into question. Not only because of the commodification of women's bodies, which is staged in advertising images or in contemporary pornography, or because of other degrading representations of the female condition, conveyed by television and in particular by entertainment programmes. But also because of a retrograde ideology that would like to turn back the clock."

"In order to reject subjugation to male power, we must first recognise it as a form of subjugation. [...] Although no human being can be treated as a slave without suffering, it often happens that we voluntarily submit to a form of slavery when we have not had the opportunity to know anything else. Habit makes us accept the unacceptable."

"For centuries, rationality has been valued as a distinctive characteristic of human beings. For centuries, it has been argued that women's argumentative abilities are inferior to those of men. For centuries, it has been claimed that, unlike men, who are naturally capable of contributing to the development of public life and the organisation of society, women should be content with the role of wife and mother, to be the obedient and submissive angel of the hearth. It is no coincidence that the main objective of feminism and many intellectuals today is still to deconstruct these stereotypical images of femininity and masculinity, to allow women to finally have access not only to formal equality, but also and above all to substantive equality: men and women must enjoy the same rights; although they are different, men and women have the same value and the same dignity."

"The more time passes, the more I am convinced that this progressive dematerialisation of women, as the only way to achieve equality, is an impasse. I do not believe that the objective existence of a sexual difference automatically implies the devaluation of women and male supremacy. On the contrary, it is precisely when we renounce difference in order to conform to a single model of humanity that we risk renouncing definitively everything that makes us unique and irreplaceable."

"I have learned to use my body in a certain way because I am immersed in a “sexualised” world, where everything contributes to teaching me what a “man” is and what a woman is. So what? Must I therefore conclude that it is more interesting to “do”, regardless of my identity as a woman, rather than “be” a woman in everything I do? Why, in order to be considered equal to men, should I give up my specificity, what characterises me as a woman?"

"When everything becomes the result of a construction, the body ends up becoming “nothing”, a sort of chemical compound that dissolves in the solvent of criticism. The door then opens wide to the very possibility of denying any role to reality. It is no longer enough to denounce male domination – which sees women's bodies as objects at the disposal of men – but we even go so far as to deny that women's bodies are different from men's."

"What matters is not just being heard, but being heard as a woman. Until the only way to be accepted and recognised as equal to men is to deny our difference and pretend that we are all identical, we women will not have won our fight for equality. There will always be someone who denies value and dignity to those who are not “perfectly identical”."

"Without prior recognition of the other, motherhood does not exist. Procreation is a relational act, a long and complex process that involves the existence of a dialogue, albeit silent, between the future child and the mother within the maternal body. If recognition does not take place, this silent dialogue does not begin, and it is difficult to imagine that a dialogue that never began could be established later. What is certain, however, is that a woman cannot be forced to continue with a pregnancy on the grounds that “she should have thought about it before”."

"The legalisation of abortion does not oblige any woman to have an abortion if she does not want one. It does not oblige anyone to consider abortion morally legitimate. It only allows all those who cannot or do not want to continue with a pregnancy to do so in the best conditions, without “paying” an excessive price for a choice which, I repeat, is never trivial. On the contrary, those who want to criminalise abortion not only seek to impose their conception of the world and morality on others, but are also “indifferent” to the tragic consequences that a return to clandestine abortion could have for many women."

"In the case of abortion, every woman knows that the problem is not only about her body, but also about an “impossible relationship” with a child that, for often different reasons, she does not want or is unable to have. I defend it above all because the legalisation of abortion is the only possibility that exists, in a civilised state, to guarantee respect for women. Not only because the life of a woman – who exists, lives, suffers, acts – is infinitely more precious than that of a being who is not yet born, but also because I am convinced that it is not enough to live for one's life to have meaning."

"Motherhood is neither a necessity nor a curse. It is an extraordinary experience that allows a woman, when she decides to become a mother, to reconcile the famous division between body and soul, without this meaning that female desire is identified with the desire for motherhood. During pregnancy, biological time imposes itself on biographical time, but never completely erases it. A woman's body becomes a space in which the mother and her unborn child enter into a relationship. Women have the opportunity to experience a very special condition: on the one hand, they identify with their changing bodies; on the other, they distance themselves from them, sometimes to the point of estrangement. The internal movements are no longer just their own. They belong to another creature that is beginning to live. It is the very boundaries of the maternal body that open up."

"In some respects, there are no words that ring true to describe motherhood. It is not a natural condition, nor is it a socially induced need. [...] During pregnancy, it is not only a woman's body that changes, but also her imagination. And, within this imagination, the child is often burdened with many expectations. Motherhood is not “just” a woman's adventure; it always involves others too: grandparents, the father, and, of course, the child who will be born and who has the right, in turn, to be cared for and fully recognised."

"In adult videos, the role of women is extremely codified. Women are there to literally embody the “vulgar Aphrodite” of whom the ancient Greeks spoke, that is, a kind of icon of animal femininity, the corrupt and corrupting woman that men seem to need to satisfy their sexual desires. Unlike the “celestial Aphrodite”, the wife or partner worthy of becoming the mother of his children, the “vulgar Aphrodite” can be treated as a mere trinket."

"Everything is much more complicated and problematic, however, when, instead of understanding that human beings are a mixture of good and evil, we grow up with the conviction that the “objects” of the world can be classified as “good objects” and “bad objects”. Because, ultimately, it is this type of mechanism that dominates when, as adults, men feel compelled to believe that there are two categories of women: madonnas and whores."

"Self-esteem does not solve all problems, and it is not insufficient self-esteem that causes the marginalisation of women. On the contrary, precisely because they are marginalised and constantly devalued, women find it difficult to value themselves."

"The vicious circle in which many women find themselves today is always the same: they find it difficult to assert themselves to others, both in their personal and professional lives, but they are very good at blaming themselves and becoming discouraged when they encounter difficulties or are criticised. [...] If men stopped criticising and started encouraging women, however, they would lose some of the power they try so hard to maintain and would therefore, at least from their point of view, be “shooting themselves in the foot”. It is up to us women to learn to do without men's recognition and to help each other to begin to recognise the value of what we do and who we are."

"Until they stop perceiving themselves as men see them, women will not be able to build self-esteem on their own. [...] To regain self-confidence, women cannot simply “decide” or “impose” it on themselves. They must gradually learn not to depend on the gaze of men; not to feel beautiful only when a man tells them so; not to feel good only when their boss or professor approves of them."

"Unlike girls, who quickly find themselves confronted with a particular aspect of their femininity when they start menstruating, boys find it more difficult to understand what it means to become men. The construction of “masculinity” depends greatly on the cultural and social environment to which young people belong. In some environments, for example, boys learn that to become men, they must display arrogance, violence and contempt for women. Masculinity then becomes a precious commodity that must be protected against all attacks that may come from the weak, from “sissies” and from homosexuals. Masculinity, a distinctive sign of manhood only when it demonstrates the inferiority of women, drives these young men in disarray to lash out against all those who “waste” it. It is no coincidence that the most violent attacks against homosexuals come precisely from those who despise women and consider them inferior to men."

"Barbie was our icon. Her success depended on her perfect body, regardless of her profession or age. Barbie was always impeccable and sublime. Barbie was always heterosexual and married. Barbie was always happy and successful. The life represented in the world of Barbie was, therefore, mythical and unattainable. The girls of my generation grew up believing that anything was possible and that “wanting” was enough to “be able”. Barbie succeeded; why shouldn't we succeed too? After all, we just had to learn to “control” ourselves: control our bodies, control our emotions, control our needs."

"In a society where the predominant message is that every woman can (and must) shape her own destiny, determine her own fate and shape her own identity, many girls felt trapped by a terrible injunction: if you want to succeed in life, you must control yourself, become what others expect of you, be flawless, even at the cost of painful sacrifices and renunciations."

"The problem for women suffering from anorexia is not hunger. Because in reality, anorexics [...] are always hungry. They have an enormous appetite. A hunger that constantly haunts them, precisely because they “cannot” and “must not” eat. The real problem with anorexia is the feeling of omnipotence that arises when you feel you can control everything, even hunger. In their emaciated bodies, anorexics defy death, even as they carry it around like a medal to show off; they defy desires, denying the body's basic needs, even as desire can no longer emerge; they defy social norms in order to feel free, even as they construct for themselves a system of uncompromising laws that they can never transgress."

"The more women try to assert themselves as equal in dignity, value and rights to men, the more men react violently. The fear of losing even a few crumbs of power makes them aggressive, brutal and vulgar. [...] These are men who do not accept female autonomy and who, often out of weakness, want to control women and subjugate them to their will. They use violence (from verbal to physical and sexual) for fear of losing their power: their attitude is perceived as “normal”; it is part of the script of masculinity to which they generally adhere deeply."

"Paradoxically, the “decline of the patriarchal empire” goes hand in hand with an increase in violence against women. The emancipation of women has not yet led to the hoped-for balance. On the contrary, men's need to demonstrate their superiority takes on extremely disturbing forms. Behind rape there is almost always a need to humiliate women, a desire to leave a mark on these beings who continue to be considered inferior."

"As time goes by, Italy is witnessing a systematic attack on feminist achievements. Whether it is degrading representations in the media or sexist language used in politics, the result is always the same: to “put women in their place”, reminding them that their “natural” place is beside men, silent and aware of male superiority. Ultimately, the political system and the television system are wonderfully intertwined and reflect a very precise view of gender roles. Men have the right to speak. Women must limit themselves to being beautiful and keeping quiet."

"The problem of insults, so-called “hate speech”, is complex. The phenomenon has been analysed by some American feminists who, by deconstructing the mechanisms of male domination, have pointed the finger at the vicious circle of “hate speech” that assigns women a well-defined role from which they can no longer escape. All those who dare to loudly claim equal civil rights are not taken seriously: their claims are immediately discredited and, instead of arguments, the insidious weapon of insults is used against them to silence them. [...] When you shout at a woman that she is a “slut”, at a homosexual that he is a “faggot” or at a black person that he is a “dirty nigger”, you do so because the other person cannot respond. What matters is not the argument you use. There is no argument, no idea, no rationality in the insult. The aim is always the same: to hurt the other person so that they remain silent."

"The real struggle for Italian women today is to work on the “contents” and no longer just on the “containers” of equality, striving to change male attitudes and mentalities. The emancipation of women has not yet led to the hoped-for balance because the vast majority of men do not want to give up their privileges."

"The possibility of breaking the “glass ceiling” is linked to the need for women to learn to “network”. We must gradually build a system of female relationships that becomes a resource for all. A system that allows us to break out of the “invisible cage” in which many of us still find ourselves, because the tendency to give in to social pressures is still strong. [...] As long as women accept as a given that they have to work a “double shift” and do not fight, by “networking”, to change the mentality of men, no law will ever be able to rid them of the “glass ceiling” that continues to discriminate against them. The freedom won in the 1960s and 1970s is no longer enough. To make it effective and achieve equality, we need to rediscover the value of solidarity."

"The days I have lived are part of my history. The joys I have known have shaped me. Without the past, which is inevitably written on my body, I would not be who I am. Erasing every mark that time leaves on our bodies means, in essence, erasing our memory as well. It means oblivion, not wanting to know, not wanting to show. It means underestimating the importance of experience, deluding ourselves that immediacy is the only value worth recognising. We cannot want to “be” and “have been” at the same time, be seventy years old and behave as if we were forty."

"Being on the side of women does not mean dreaming of a world in which the power relations can finally be reversed so that men suffer what women have suffered for centuries. Being on the side of women means fighting to build an egalitarian society in which being a man or a woman is “irrelevant”, has no significance. Not because being a man or a woman is the same thing, but because both men and women are human beings who share the best and worst of the human condition. The goal of women is not to dominate men, after having been dominated for centuries, but to fight to gradually move away from this logic of domination, without forgetting that, despite everything, human beings are (and will always remain) deeply ambivalent."

"There are two values I am not willing to give up: freedom and equality. No one can impose their conception of life, their ideas or their beliefs on others. Even if freedom is never absolute [...], everyone must be able to choose how to live their life, without coercion or intimidation. Only when we are free can we take responsibility for our choices, our actions and their consequences: freedom is the cornerstone of personal autonomy; it is what allows each person to become the protagonist of their own life. At the same time, however, in order for freedom not to remain an abstract value, it is necessary to organise the conditions conducive to its exercise, first and foremost among which is equality. If I do not have the same rights as others and if I do not have the material means to assert them, I cannot automatically be free to choose what I want to do or to achieve what I desire."

"To freedom as “non-interference”, the famous “freedom from” of the liberal philosophical tradition, we must add freedom as “non-domination”, “freedom to”, that effective freedom that allows everyone to participate in “public affairs” without suffering the consequences of intolerable discrimination on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, skin colour or religious belief."

"By concealing what it covers, the veil, by definition, manages to both “show” and “avert the gaze”. From this point of view, it is generally used to protect oneself from the gaze of others, to escape the logic of shame. To show oneself and be seen, one must want to do so: to allow the gaze of others to rest on us without hurting us. The veil can then be a shelter for the woman who wears it, provided, however, that she never closes herself off completely. If it serves to protect the mystery of the body, it must also allow something to be glimpsed: the eyes, an ankle, a strand of hair. Otherwise, there is a risk of it becoming a “shroud”."

"The comparison between Yasser Arafat and Giuseppe Mazzini does not hold up. Mazzini was opposed to the terrorist plans of certain factions of the Carbonari. In fact, he generally disapproved of the Carbonari and broke with them. This is one of his historical merits. He wanted an association, the “Giovine Italia”, which would call for open political struggle. This also included the use of arms against absolutist and tyrannical governments that did not allow any freedom. But it was an armed struggle aimed at mobilising public opinion, not at physically suppressing opponents."

"They were just idealists. In addition to a political organisation, Arafat administers large financial interests under the banners of petrodollars, sheikhs and, in general, Arab states that are anything but democratic. Israel is much more so."

"Of course, it would be good to evacuate the territories occupied in the 1967 war, with the exception of Jerusalem, which is a special case. But this cannot be expected if an organisation that practises terrorism against Israel and whose aim is the destruction of that state is established in these territories. No one can be asked to commit suicide."

"I am the first to criticise Israeli policy in the West Bank, the settlements, the restrictions on democratic freedoms, everything that is reactionary and repressive. I criticise Israel's very presence in those territories. But I do not demand its suicide."

"Israel is not Austria, which kept Lombardy-Veneto under its heel. It is like the constitutional Austria of 1867, which opened its Parliament to minorities, to the Italians of Trento, Trieste and Pola. No one denies the Palestinians living in the occupied territories the right to irredentism. I fully recognise that. But under that Austria, would Italian irredentists have done well to resort to terrorism? Even in Trieste, many distanced themselves from Oberdan's plan to assassinate the king. His attempt would have had dramatic consequences if it had been carried out."

"Moderation is needed to resolve the Middle East conflict. As things stand today, the PLO is an obstacle to peace. If it does not renounce armed struggle and terrorism, if it does not give Israel security guarantees within agreed borders, it must be excluded from Hussein's negotiations."

"[...] Croce always felt at ease with artists who were fully “sliricati”, totally adhering to a fundamental motif, to a unified state of mind. Artists such as Ludovico Ariosto and Giovanni Verga seemed to have been born especially for him because every page they wrote contained him in his entirety. (p. 43)"

"Croce, for his part, was less Crocean than many of his followers because his temperament and taste were almost never overwhelmed by his theoretical schemes. (p. 46)"

"Years ago, a curious debate took place in England: the poet Eliot wondered how it was possible to admire the work of a poet (in this case Goethe) whose ideas and conception of life were not accepted. The problem was declared insoluble. Yet the problem had already been solved by Marx, an admirer of Greek tragedy, which arose from a social structure and a conception of the world that was certainly not his own. Even Friedrich Nietzsche did not deny the art of Richard Wagner when he declared that Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was an attack on civilisation, and he did not pose the problem because he recognised that there is no necessary cause-and-effect relationship between aesthetic admiration and ethical consent. In any case, such a problem cannot arise in Italy because Croce has been there. (p. 51)"

"An internationally renowned novelist, Arthur Koestler, whose most popular book earned him a flattering review from Benedetto Croce, recounted in “The Earth's Foam” how Croce's philosophy was our daily topic of conversation even in the concentration camp. (p. 59)"

"Prisons are places conducive to reading philosophical texts. Silvio Spaventa, Croce's uncle, spent his years of life imprisonment well, meditating on the works of Hegel. (p. 61)"

"Often, people find it in their interest not to think, or they lack the energy and intellectual perseverance necessary to think seriously. But if they think, overcoming the practical obstacles that stand in the way of thinking, they can arrive at the truth. (p. 67)"

"If thought is truth, then, if it encountered no obstacles, it would consist in the contemplation of itself. (p. 68)"

"Carlo Antoni noted in his essays on Croce that the struggle over the distinction between activity and between ethical and economic-political practice initially changed, unnoticed by its author, the perspective of the entire edifice. Turning, in “'Filosofia della pratica”', with still only speculative interests, to the consideration of politics, Croce was critical, above all, of humanitarian, Enlightenment, egalitarian democracy. (p. 72)"

"Among the sailors and workers of Kronstadt, who rose up in early 1921 against the party's totalitarian dictatorship, there were many who had fought in the ranks of the Bolsheviks at the beginning of the Soviet revolution. Trotsky, who led the fierce repression of this rebellion, nevertheless succeeded in portraying them as instruments of the counter-revolution. (pp. 104-105)"

"As leader of the victorious Red Army, and as an overwhelming public speaker and brilliant writer, Trotsky, who before joining Bolshevism in 1917 had been an independent left-wing socialist, enjoyed great popularity. However, he lacked the skills for behind-the-scenes manoeuvring, faction-building, intrigue and cunning, which, especially in a dictatorship where open dissent and public political debate are prohibited, counted more than anything else. These were qualities, if they can be called that, which the party's general secretary, Stalin, possessed in abundance. (p. 105)"

"Stalin improvised the economic programme with top-down planning for rapid industrialisation and the forced collectivisation of the countryside, accompanied by the physical liquidation of millions of reluctant peasants. It was a new civil war won by the totalitarian state, which propaganda, as false as it was effective, defined as the immediate realisation of socialism, arousing waves of genuine enthusiasm among the younger generation and, at the same time, using coercive measures of unlimited brutality. (p. 106)"

"Vittorio de Caprariis, Eugenio Montale, Leo Valiani, Benedetto Croce, Edizioni di Comunità, 1963."

"Leo Valiani, Terrore a porte chiuse, in Storia illustrata, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milano, n. 339, February 1986, pp. 104-112."

"Andreotti did everything and the opposite of everything; Forlani did nothing and the opposite of nothing."

"Craxi's politics have the present, they have the future, they have eternity."

"[When asked if he had ever experienced homosexual feelings] Certainly. And more than once. I experience friendship in a very strong way, even in these terms. After all, I believe that homosexuality can be a Christian fact [...] The Church can admit that two people of the same sex exchange affection and use purely erotic terminology [...] Pope Paul VI in the document Persona humana defines homosexuality as a ‘disordered condition’, not a sinful one. What does ‘disordered condition’ mean? This needs to be discussed."

"I have always noticed that the only figure defined as "unjust" in the Gospel is that of a judge: and it seemed to me an apt definition. Fascism was less hateful than this robed bureaucracy that used violence in the name of justice. In the history of Italy, if freedom had prevailed, as I now believe to be certain, the names of the magistrates of Milan, Antonio Di Pietro, Borrelli, Davigo, and Boccassini would have been forever signati nigro lapillo as figures to be remembered with horror, those of the unjust judge."

"The Islamic God has nothing in common with man: he is a Presence without measure, blending personality and impersonality in himself. [...] For the Christian, it is clear here what the Trinity means to him, namely that God is a relationship between persons, that is, intrinsically human. [...] The Christian God is a person and can only be understood as a relationship between persons."

"In the 20th century, Christian Democracy performed the function that the States of the Church had performed for fourteen hundred years"

"(About the cultural roots of Umberto Bossi) A little bit of right-wing Fascism, a little bit of Marxism in slang."

"On the front of anti-clericalism and aversion to the Church, we are witnessing a real drift, parallel to certain political battles. There is an anti-Christian tide rising in Europe, an anti-Catholic sentiment. It is difficult to predict exactly what will happen. Violence no longer affects only politics but also the symbolic part of society. Therefore, it also affects the Church. :*Quoted in Roberto Zuccolini, Baget Bozzo: è il segno dell' anticlericalismo dilagante (Baget Bozzo: it is a sign of rampant anticlericalism), Corriere della sera”', 30 April 2007, p. 3."

"I don't like Costanzo. We argued in 1994 when he presented Berlusconi with an audience of hostile people. Vespa, on the other hand, created Porta a Porta, a masterpiece. He has been more useful than Costanzo. “'Porta a Porta”' is the most useful thing there is for the centre-right."

"(About the possible successor to Silvio Berlusconi) The issue has not yet arisen, for the moment. However, the two most likely candidates are currently Gianfranco Fini and Giulio Tremonti. They are neck and neck. [...] I do not see any women as future leaders; no one in Forza Italia is ready, nor indeed in the entire centre-right."

"The transformation of the electorate into a television audience has raised the quality of democracy and brought direct democracy closer to parliamentary democracy, thus bringing Western democracy closer to its model, Athenian democracy, the original form of direct democracy."

"Between us and the left lies the blood of Craxi, which cries out for vengeance before God."

"The West has lost its faith but not the wisdom and hope of faith [...], the Christian roots of the West appear precisely when they are no longer recognised."

"The primacy of personal freedom – writes Don Gianni, referring to the social order – indicates the transcendence of the person over society... this idea is a Christian legacy: it is divine life communicated to the person by the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ: every person has become an end in relation to society because of the primacy of Jesus Christ as a person who lives in other people. (p. 136)"

"Europe has received from the United States the imprint of Christianity in freedom. (p. 137)"

"The West, the concept born in the struggle against Nazism and Communism [...] is the secular and liberal version of Christianity, thanks above all to the United States [...] by opposing the United States at all levels, the Church is fighting against the Christianity of which the West is the fruit."

"We are pleased to publish this article by Gianni Baget Bozzo, a member of the Christian Democracy party in the 1950s, now a priest and historian of the Catholic party."

"Giordano Bruno represented a break between the pre-modern and modern eras with his thinking. The pre-modern era involved the idea that there is an order in society as in everything else and that this order is vertical: from top to bottom; something, therefore, that clearly takes the form of a hierarchy. What Bruno brings to philosophy is the infinity of the universe. In an infinite universe, there are no absolute centers: every point is relatively a center, with respect to all the others. With Bruno, there is therefore a transition from a hierarchical vision to one that I would not hesitate to define as anarchic!"

"Naples is the city of longevity, it is always the ‘new city’, reborn ‘new’ in the 5th century BC, Greek in blood and spirit, but hybridized by countless cultures, offended by long oppression and never surrendered. Every time 'capta cepit". Its genius is not only concentrated in its extraordinary philosophers, from Bruno of Nola and therefore a fellow countryman to the great Vico, but also in the fabric of popular culture. The Neapolitan has no irony, but sharp wit: thus he defends himself not from life, like the ironic, but in life."

"Naples, in my dream, even if hopping and mocking like Pulcinella, will manage to build self-respect. [...] I have often reproached Naples for its shortcomings, for this bourgeoisie that I have deplored for its lack of unity. In Naples, there are many good bourgeois, but not a class that knows how to elevate the collective life of all through the effort of common dialogue, of a project. :*Quoted in ‘’The dream of Masullo, honorary citizen: ‘I would like Naples to build respect for itself’'‘, ilmattino.it, June 8, 2018."

"This is a theme that we have been pursuing for millennia, asking ourselves what is specific to Naples, if there is anything specific to Naples. From an approximate, empirical point of view, Naples certainly has the singularity of a character among its inhabitants that is very open to relationships with others. This has its historical origins. Those who live in the Basso, a few steps away from each other, are inevitably accustomed to a common custom, and it is this common custom that helps them in times of danger or difficulty. This is the first aspect. And it is on this fundamental, basic aspect that a whole culture develops. Neapolitan culture is a culture of community, of being together, as one might say. It is then a question of analyzing whether this being together is only a superficial attempt to remedy what we lack, that is, something deeper than our living, or whether this being together is itself the profound living that we seek. It is all to be decided, and we have not yet decided it in millennia."

"Among the characters frequently encountered in the great theater of Pulcinella that is Naples, there is not only the “guappo.” There is also the “soul of Purgatory.” On the walls at street corners in authentically working-class Neapolitan neighborhoods, one often finds votive shrines with Madonnas and saints, as well as “souls of Purgatory.” Their artistic value is nil, but their anthropological and cultural significance is very interesting. [...] It is not the devils of Hell or the angels of Heaven that inhabit Naples, but the souls of Purgatory. They are an intermediate population, whose only destiny is to try to save themselves from the worst depths and rise towards a definitive salvation from which they remain fatally distant. And the common people pray for the souls in Purgatory; they have a prominent place in their devotion. [...] The soul in Purgatory represents those who are not completely lost, who have not fallen into Hell, who have not disappeared, swallowed up in the bottomless cavities of the ground in Naples. In one way or another, Neapolitans nestle in these cavities and do not get lost: rather, like the soul in Purgatory, they remain suspended, halfway between high and low, between Paradise and Hell. Vertically, they move without changing place, without ever moving, just as horizontally a cyclist does, who, skillfully exercising their strength on the pedals, neither advances nor retreats: standing still on two wheels, they remain in balance or, as they say, ‘surplace’. [...] In the same way, the Neapolitan, without ever taking a step forward or backward, maintains his balance in his immobility."

"Leopardi argued that modern man no longer feels passion and emotion, that he spends his life in boredom. This state of mind, this fundamental insensitivity to difference, is accentuated today by the wealth of resources at our disposal, which multiply technical possibilities by pursuing quantity for its own sake."

"The inability to perceive differences afflicts all generations today, but it is particularly insidious for young people who have grown up under the banner of “nothing is impossible”: I can go to America in a few hours, dance all night, fill my eyes with hundreds of images in a few minutes, I can, I can, I can... a bulimia of quantity in which quality, that is, meaning, dissolves. In terms of time, speed is dominant."

"The driving force must come from those who can do more, i.e., from politics and institutions. Those who govern society at any level must show what it means to be human. Because example is the only thing that matters, the example set by those at the top makes collective effort possible. Only through example can rulers obtain consent to sacrifices."

"The essence of education is to promote the experience of difference and the exercise of enjoying what is not trivial, thus forming strong personalities."

"I really like Renato Zero: he is a great artist, and he confirmed this to me in Venice, if ever there was any need. He knows how to hold the stage, he has that extra something that makes him great, beyond what he sings and what he says. I don't know him very well as a person, but in Venice he was very affectionate and kind to my daughter Michela, and so he won me over completely. He's not pretentious, he's sensitive, elegant, in short, I like him a lot."

"Fini should get lost. He's not part of the PDL. If he wants to leave, let him go."

"(About Mikīs Theodōrakīs) He was the greatest composer of Mediterranean music of the twentieth century: by Mediterranean, I mean the entire tradition of the countries bordering that sea, including our own. His notes were and are the essence of that spirit, of that soul."

"I am not diplomatic. For the sake of humour, I say anything. And then I regret it."

"The market pays. And then you get a lot of spring onions and cherries. A Neapolitan man in Pioltello gave me a fish. He started shouting: ‘Zanicca! Zanicca! Vote for Zanicca’. [During the campaign for the 2004 European elections]"

"You other men are lucky... until you're ninety... I'm over sixty, I'm done."

"Ours is a strange job. If you work, you earn money; if you don't work, you don't."

"I didn't have a very high fee. But I had sponsors. For ten years, I advertised mattresses. In the end, I looked like a mattress."

"She's not a turncoat, but what happened to her is monstrous. Today's Pivetti, all leather and studs, bald and with her boobs out, looks like the daughter of the one in the Chamber with her scarf and suit."

"(About Pippo Baudo) He's someone who works hard and well. A great professional, but as a person he's rubbish."

"I had a moment of weakness at the end of my marriage and cheated on my husband. I still congratulate myself. It was the first time I had fallen in love. But no important lovers. I had many important suitors."

"(About Roberto Benigni) He said defamatory things about me and Berlusconi. [Live from Sanremo with the programme L'Italia allo specchio, in the episode aired on 20 February 2009]."

"I was treated in an indecent, unseemly manner by Mr Benigni. He said some monstrous things. (Live from Sanremo with the programme La vita in diretta, Intervento a La vita in diretta, 20 February 2009()."

"[This isn't the time for campaign booths. Who killed the PD?] Our generation bears a very heavy responsibility. We thought we were going to explain to those who came before us how the world worked, but instead we brought the PD down to 18% and caused the collapse of the center-left. [Is it Renzi’s fault?] The "scrapping" campaign failed spectacularly; it was a cultural and political disaster."

"[What will Boccia contribution to the new Democratic Party leadership?] I will bring the dedication and enthusiasm with which I initially ran for the party leadership, focusing on three key issues: full-time schooling, repealing the Jobs Act, and the Democratic Party’s sudden shift toward addressing the concerns of the environmental movement."

"When you no longer care for the poor, when you don’t reconnect the suburbs, the local markets, the unemployed youth, the young people in precarious jobs, and the pensioners living on the minimum pension to the very heart of the country—and through them, reach out to the institutions—you simply turn to the right and go your own way. [...] We thought that saying, “I’ll scrap everything, change everything, send them home,” because the country wasn’t working, would be enough. And yet, when put to the test by the government, this “scrapping” clearly failed to convince Italians."

"Salvini and the Five Star Movement, including Conte, acted a bit like Dracula with the blood bank. In reality, he was only concerned with feeding himself and his power—a power that is destructive to the country. Salvini has a different vision of society. I had said even before this government was formed that the Five Star Movement had nothing to do with the League. And even a year before this crazy political saga, I was among those who hoped for a different kind of alliance."

"We had asked Salvini, through Fico, to provide a briefing. Salvini refused, and this is very serious. [...] Such a significant issue—relations with Russia, our place within the Atlantic alliance, and relations with these individuals from whom Salvini has not yet distanced himself—cannot be discussed during Question Time, which has strict time limits and a rigid format. You cannot just pop into the chamber for two minutes. You come to the chamber to engage in a debate and explain to Italians in full detail what has happened, and also to hear the opposition’s arguments. [...] If he does not show up, he will first and foremost be showing disrespect for the Italian Republic, and secondly for the Democratic Party."

"You cannot govern a country by isolating yourself. The League has isolated itself in Europe. Unfortunately, a year ago, the PD isolated itself in Italy. Today, we are at the center of this political debate."

"[How did you get started in this field?] Professionally speaking, it all started by chance. I studied advertising and specialized as an art director in 1992. In 1995, I discovered the Internet and was struck by the fact that most websites were created by programmers who had no knowledge of visual communication."

"[What are the necessary requirements and professional skills?] There are so many of them that, for this very reason, web specializations have multiplied in recent years. A webmaster must certainly have a deep understanding of the world of communication. Graphic design, photography, writing, and elements of psychology are essential foundations. Programming languages or software usage take a back seat."

"At the beginning of our relationship, he was a free spirit, very much aligned with the libertine ideal embodied by Franco Califano, his idol and dearest friend. I was insecure and saw danger everywhere; today, I don’t. Family comes first for both of us. However, at the start of our relationship, he was easily distracted—that’s for sure."

"[About the Telekom Serbia case] I confess: I am the puppet master behind this whole affair. I am turning myself in for complicity in slander with Paoletti, Marini, and Pintus. [I] have created difficulties for Forza Italia and Berlusconi. [It is therefore right] that I withdraw from political life. I have made a grave mistake, and this is an open confession; it is right that I make a public apology; I acknowledge that Repubblica is staffed by first-rate journalists. I am making a serious announcement: I will resign as a member of parliament in the coming days. Through the various schemes outlined by Repubblica and my ties to figures such as D’Andria, Fracassi, Di Bari, and even Francesco Pazienza—all linked in the public imagination to rogue intelligence agencies and international fraud and money laundering—I succeeded in making the Telekom Serbia Commission the target of a poisoned chalice. I take full responsibility for the individuals who, by implicating Prodi, Dini, and Fassino, have seriously slandered them; and I accuse myself of complicity in slander, though I hope Repubblica does the same, because while I accuse myself, I would like to know from D’Avanzo and Bonini who their puppet masters were at the time and whom they now serve. Repubblica is right, I cannot sue!"

"(About the deaths of Ilaria Alpi and Miran Hrovatin) They were on vacation in Somalia; they were not conducting any investigation: the Commission has established this (January 2004)."

"(About the case of Eluana Englaro) A genuine murder has taken place. [Even] Parliament itself has been taken for a ride. My complaint would have been for attempted murder; now it will be different—namely, premeditated murder. And it will be filed against the girl’s father Beppino Englaro, against the doctors who treated her, and also against the Public Prosecutor of Udine for abuse of office or for whatever crimes may be identified. As for the prosecutor in Udine, who has been completely inactive, I will request the intervention of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Milan, which has jurisdiction over crimes committed by the judges in Udine. This barbaric murder, this attack on life, must be punished and brought to justice."

"I worked for years for Berlusconi; I know his strategies. When I was his legal advisor and he asked me to draft laws that would protect him from the magistrates, he certainly made no secret of their ad personam purpose. And I drafted them even better than Ghedini and Pecorella do now. The one on legitimate suspicion—I think it was 2002—he needed to move his trials from Milan to Rome. He asked us for it openly, and we, faithful executors of the prince’s will, set about writing it. And we did a pretty good job, I must say: everything seemed in order. Then one evening in late October, around 11 p.m., a call came from Ciampi. I told Berlusconi that with that amendment, it wouldn’t serve any purpose anymore. He thought about it for a moment and then replied: “Let’s do it this way for now, and we’ll see.” I was right: in fact, the law passed with those amendments and was of no use to him."

"There are many things I did during that period that I would never do again. I have no qualms about saying that I went through a moral crisis, which culminated when I saw how the Cavaliere's inner circle was taking shape."

"(Regarding the secret dossier on Ilaria Alpi) I have absolutely no recollection of having given that document to the then-Chief of Police, and I certainly did not grant any investigative authority to Gianni De Gennaro."

"Se vinciamo, stavolta non faremo prigionieri."

"Criminals judge judges. We want to be judged by whoever we choose. Previti wants to be judged by a judge who thinks like him. But if the judge thought like Previti, he wouldn’t be a judge—he’d be a criminal."

"Previti sued me for a billion because I compared him to a Rottweiler. It should be the Rottweiler Association suing for a billion because I compared them to Previti."

"Previti can’t be judged because he’s a defendant, but also a member of parliament. But if I saw him near my car, I’d call the police."

"I once saw it on TV—there was Previti, Ferrara, and Ignazio La Russa; oh, I thought it was an episode of Star Trek."

"Previti is something of a Lombrosian symbol of the Italian political system's ills. He is the person most responsible for the situation in Italy, second only to Berlusconi."

"I believe I have made my opinion of Mr. Previti clear in terms so explicit that they may seem—to more than a few—brutal: a man who, just by looking at his face, makes you want to slap handcuffs on him before you even know who he is or what he has done."

"It is no coincidence that the lawyer defending Zappadu is a member of the European Parliament from Antonio Di Pietro's Italia dei Valori party. He wears two hats—lawyer and parliamentarian—that should not be confused. I mean: if the victim is the Prime Minister and the defendant is being defended by a member of an opposition party... well... it’s as if I were to bring a civil action in any trial against, say, D’Alema, Fassino, or Prodi."

"Even if this girl’s allegations were true—and they are not—the Prime Minister would, according to the reconstruction, be the end user and therefore never criminally liable."

"The Lega aspires to a fragmented, quasi-feudal world of city-states, and yearns for a sort of autarky: with a “yes” to polenta and a “no” to pineapple, as if this were a problem of the future..."

"The law is the same for everyone, but its application is not necessarily so."

"Ciancimino’s statements regarding Milano Due are completely devoid of any factual basis or logic, and can be refuted with documentation at any time. All financial flows related to Milano 2—a real estate project that even today is considered one of the finest achievements in our country—are more than transparent and have repeatedly been subject to thorough audits and verifications. [...] All findings have demonstrated the entirely lawful origin of all the money used.[7]"

"Santoro is a great professional; I appreciate him; he’s someone who does his job very well. He may well be biased, but he does so clearly. He doesn’t deceive the viewer. Interviewer: Did you enjoy going there, Ghedini? Ghedini: It was an exhausting battle, but a good one. I preferred it to so many self-righteous shows."

"Santoro gets on my nerves because he’s fighting a friend of mine. But I appreciate his professionalism. He’s biased, but in an open way. Interviewer: Do you prefer Vespa or Santoro? Ghedini: I have more fun on Santoro’s show."

"I don’t like going there (to AnnoZero) to play that role, and I don’t like that ring where they call you on just because they want to tear you apart. I go—it's my duty—but I feel the breath of hatred, and in some way I feed it too, of course.[10]"

"[About a wiretap of Giuseppe Graviano] No one has shown us this conversation. If it existed, we would have to listen to it to verify Graviano’s actual words. In any case, he knew he was being recorded and might have misled them. I am not aware of any meeting between Berlusconi and Graviano or anyone directly or indirectly linked to him. Much less with a well-known cousin of him."

"[About Giuseppe Graviano’s statements] After 26 uninterrupted years of imprisonment, Mr. Graviano suddenly makes statements clearly aimed at obtaining procedural or prison benefits by inventing meetings, figures, and episodes that are implausible and untrue. One can, among other things, perfectly understand the deep animosity toward President Berlusconi for all the laws enacted by his governments specifically against the Mafia. Obviously, all appropriate legal actions will be taken before the judicial authorities."

"The situation is laughable: President Berlusconi, who works around the clock, is a man of great wealth, charm, and zest for life... He certainly doesn’t need anyone to bring him women."

"To think that Berlusconi needs to pay a girl 2,000 euros just to go out with him seems a bit much to me. I think he could have plenty of them, for free."

"Berlusconi has great respect for women and no inclination to pay a woman to have a relationship with him."

"This time we took action purely as a matter of principle. A newspaper—namely *L'Unità*—cannot write that a person is impotent or a pig without expecting the accused person to take offense and react."

"Berlusconi is ready to go to court to explain that not only is he not a big pig, but he isn’t impotent either."

"You see, not everything is the result of political cunning. There are also moves dictated by pride and a sense of honor. And why on earth [...] shouldn’t Berlusconi be able to explain to twenty million Italians—his loyal voters—that he is perfectly capable?"

"I never held any major positions in the PSI, but I had the honor of being a friend of Craxi."

"I’ll miss politics, but it’s no tragedy. I’m going back to my studies, to medieval philosophy."

"I will miss certain moments. I, who had been in the PSI until the public prosecutor’s office dissolved it in ’92, remember well the months spent at the Ministry of Justice: together with Minister Biondi, we were the protagonists of the failed—though noble—attempt to bring the justice system back on track."

"Once the [PSI] party was dissolved, some became Muslims, some Jews, some Catholics. But we have always remained socialists."

"It’s true, laws were enacted to serve specific trials. We passed the Schifani ruling—later declared unconstitutional, and in fact it was unconstitutional in some respects—to allow Berlusconi to govern (October 9, 2004)"

"This ruling [on the unconstitutionality of the Pecorella Law] could reopen trials already before the Court of Cassation, and the decisive factor will once again be not the oral and public trial in the first instance, but the appeal based on written documents."

"I say that among the motives cited (for the murder of Don Peppino Diana) in the trial records, there are some of the most diverse. During the trial, some spoke of revenge out of jealousy, others reported that he was killed because they wanted to divert the investigations that were underway regarding another criminal group. And others also reported that he kept the clan’s weapons. No one has ever said why this murder took place, given that there were no precedents to reconstruct the facts. If one is familiar with the trial documents, one knows that various motives are cited by different sources. [...] There are various motives; there is also the one—which did not emerge at first—that he was engaged in anti-Camorra activities. To tell the truth, even this did not emerge very clearly as a motive during the trial. It is pointless for us to build fantasies around hypotheses. His anti-Camorra activism is among the hypotheses. But during the trial, it did not emerge in a striking way; there was never any mention of mass mobilization or people taking to the streets. It’s not as if there had been public demonstrations or documents. Someone also cited this reason. As you can see, there are many motives. Certainly, he was killed by the Camorra. Anyone killed by the Camorra is a victim of the Camorra. Now, if he is a martyr, we must understand that from the motive, which has not been clarified."

"A paid sexual encounter not with a 14-year-old but with a girl who was six months shy of being of age. Legally, that’s how it is [a minor]. But she was six months away, and it doesn’t seem to me—allow me the irony regarding my surname—that she was some poor lost lamb. As for me, though this is a personal opinion, I believe that today the age of majority is too high compared to the maturity young people have reached."

"In any case, I did not propose the decree [the so-called Biondi Decree]; it was Berlusconi."

"(About the debate between a hard line and negotiation during the Moro case) There is no need to divide ourselves into hawks and doves; there is no need to misrepresent the spirit of renunciation and submission as warm humanitarianism, or, as cold statism, the basic requirement of not compromising on inalienable rights and duties, such as the duty to deliver justice and ensure the equality of citizens before the law."

"The liberals are in the government, but Forza Italia is controlled by the Christian Democrats, the Socialists, the Communists, and former Fininvest employees."

"(About the description of Silvio Berlusconi as a liberal) In economic terms. Otherwise, he's a bit of a Christian Democrat and a bit of a Craxi supporter."

"(About Silvio Berlusconi) Now he has to deal with what he calls the “theater of politics,” which requires dialogue, while he prefers monologues."

"Dini is a high-ranking official at the Bank of Italy with the strengths and limitations of someone who lends money to those who already have it."

"Pomicino is one of those local figures who thrive in their own little world but don’t know where to go outside of it."

"Scalfaro remains right-wing and fundamentalist even though he joins the protests. Just like what happened to Montanelli or Federico Orlando. They’re characterized by moralistic rigor. Bigotry. The secular kind is worse than the religious kind."

"Daniele Capezzone. He’s a cleric, a young man of rare intelligence who strikes me the same way as those learned priests who become cardinals."

"Berlusconi should choose people capable of saying no to him. And besides, he works too much. He invites me to long dinners at his house where we talk only about politics. But he should go to a trattoria, to chat, to watch people."

"Bondi is an offshoot of Berlusconi. In fact, Bondi is Berlusconi. Bondi is the boss at the disposal of the periphery. He listens to everyone."

"As long as the presiding judge is a colleague of the prosecutor—whom she might even marry—then I wonder if they hold their chambers in bed."

"Berlusconi has a very strong ego. But the party has faded without him."

"Forza Italia lacks internal debate. Because of a vision I call “leadercratic.”"

"Fede is grateful to Berlusconi because he never abandoned him. Berlusconi is good. He never abandons anyone."

"I’ve figured out the mystery of why Scajola fell in love with Berlusconi. His dream was to become important in Liguria. He succeeded by placing his people everywhere."

"Fazio is the mellifluous leftist. His eyes look like two eggs in a frying pan."

"Gruber is a smug little saint."

"(About Valerio Zanone) The least liberal of them all. A liberal is humble. He is limited by his arrogance."

"(About Bruno Vespa) He is too accommodating. He doesn’t put his guests on the spot. He hosts well but with a loose rein. Everyone leaves satisfied and even reimbursed."

"He is a cheerful man, even a bit of a joker, prone to sudden outbursts of anger and just as quick to forget them. He served as a minister in both the First and Second Republics, as Vice President of the Chamber of Deputies, and as secretary of the PLI. When I was editor-in-chief of *Cuore*, he sued me, though neither of us remembers why. He is dogged by an undeserved reputation as a heavy drinker and a well-deserved one as a witticism-spinner."

"(About the Biondi decree) I had protested, saying that in matters of justice, one cannot legislate by decree. But Biondi, who partly shared my position, explained to me that Berlusconi, alarmed by the possibility of his brother Paolo’s arrest, had exerted enormous pressure to have such a measure passed. (2 February 1995)"

"Ho pensato di iscrivermi a quella loggia come ci si iscrive al Rotary, ai Lions. Così quando è scoppiato lo scandalo P2 non mi restava che il suicidio..."

"Ho capito, ad esempio, che Bettino Craxi e Claudio Martelli c'erano dentro fino al collo con Gelli e Ortolani. Ad esempio, la storia dei 30 milioni di dollari, del conto Protezione, mica è uno scherzo. C'è da credere davvero che in quegli anni, con tutti quei soldi, si siano comprati il PSI."

"Se io, Signorile e De Michelis fossimo rimasti insieme, saremmo riusciti a contrastare Craxi. Insieme funzionavamo, purtroppo andò in maniera diversa e per me alla rottura contribuì anche un problema finanziario."

"We do not believe that turning a self-deprecating joke into a gruesome and vulgar challenge to the public is the height of proper reporting. Unfortunately, that is what Enzo Biagi is doing today in the Corriere della Sera. All this is topped off with a grossly sexist remark directed at the provincial coordinator of Forza Italia in Bolzano. If there were a festival of bad taste and misinformation today, this time Biagi would have won first prize."

"You will get nowhere by setting up small firing squads that, in the name of the single party, beat up Berlusconi."

"The hand of the man who attacked Berlusconi was fuelled by a ruthless hate campaign, [waged] by the Repubblica-L’Espresso publishing group, by that morning paper of the public prosecutors known as “'Il Fatto”', by a programme hosted by Santoro and by a media terrorist named Travaglio, as well as by certain public prosecutors, who are handling some of the most sensitive trials concerning the relationship between the Mafia and politics and who appear on television to demonise Berlusconi. And by a party such as Idv, with its leader Di Pietro, who in recent days has been inciting violence."

"The monsters are the secret services, an increasingly substantial and dynamic structure that intervenes continuously, massively and oppressively in political and social reality [...] In 1968–69, the protest movement shook the established order, which, in turn, sought to recover in various ways, one of which was the systematic, provocative and violent terrorist activity of specific sectors of the separate bodies of the State [...] The monsters fabricate opposing extremisms: the regime’s darling, Rai TV, is responsible for amplifying the distortion, presenting it as objective; Sid and Rai TV, two very different entities and yet so close when it comes to supporting, in critical decisions, the DC regime. [...] True to form, the Red Brigades reappear on the eve of every election. (1975, introduction to Marco Sassano’s book “Sid and the American Party. The role of the CIA, the secret services and the separate corps in the strategy of subversion", published by Marsilio. Quoted from “”Micromega“”, 16 December 2009)"

"Craxi preferred to say no rather than yes. You leave Berlusconi’s office with a smile; even if his generosity sometimes leads him to say a few too many yeses."

"Craxi’s mortal sin was not the bribes; it was his choice of autonomy. That, indeed, was not forgiven him."

"Bettino is blamed for never having broken with the Christian Democrats; but, when he showed himself ready to do so, Berlinguer was on the verge of reaching an agreement with De Mita and Spadolini for a "different government", with technocrats, just to marginalise the Socialists."

"(About Bettino Craxi) A giant, a part of the country’s history. To criminalise him is a vulgar act. How many crimes did Togliatti commit or cover up in the 1930s and 1940s? Yet he is considered part of our history. Craxi’s true ‘crime’ was to restore ideological autonomy to the Socialists, dismantling the myth of Lenin and indeed that of Gramsci as well."

"Being notoriously a troglodyte, Francesco Speroni is incapable of speaking about the First, Second or even Third Republic. Fortunately, the Lega in the Chamber, the Senate and local authorities has a political class of a different calibre."

"It is regrettable that some Fini supporters have aped Travaglio, plundering his books and writings to the full."

"(About the incident involving the Italian fishing boat fired upon by a Libyan patrol boat) We are dealing with a counterpart who is addafi, a man with unique characteristics but one with whom we must reckon. He could dump thousands and thousands of immigrants on our shores. The whole fishing boat incident must be condemned; it is deplorable, but a break with Gaddafi and with Libya would have disastrous consequences for our country."

"In the coming hours we will see the true scale of the Wikileaks operation and will therefore be able to give a considered assessment. In any case, it is now clear that the very concept of terrorism has come to have a much broader meaning than the traditional one. It is evident that there is a form of media terrorism which, in certain respects, can be far more effective than traditional terrorism. In Italy, this modern and sophisticated form of terrorism has been underway for some time and has become increasingly aggressive in recent months."

"The proposal to lower the age of majority is one of the issues on the table but it is not the most urgent one."

"The former AN members are in a state of perpetual congress; every now and then the mechanism kicks in."

"It is clear that the current electronic voting system is unable to effectively safeguard the secrecy of MPs’ votes and, consequently, it would be appropriate to use another system for this purpose, for example, one involving black and white balls to be placed in the ballot box, perhaps inside mobile booths."

"In the face of death, it is clear that political differences fade away. For this reason, we express our deepest condolences on the death of Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, who was always – in all the political and institutional roles he held – a consistent and fierce political opponent of ours."

"(Referring to the onti Government) This Government had three objectives, or at least three slogans: austerity, growth, fairness. As far as austerity is concerned, there has been an extraordinary and exceptional degree of it. We acknowledge that the Government has gone beyond even what was required by the economic and financial logic of Italy and the international context. Zero growth, zero fairness: this is our assessment of this government, and we also note that we have been faced with a unilateral policy in terms of a formal 45 per cent and a substantial 55 per cent increase in the tax burden, accompanied by such deep cuts to the spending of local authorities, regions and municipalities that the repercussions will be felt, be felt by ordinary citizens, and further exacerbated by that utterly sadistic measure that was the IMU."

"I recall when Paolo Guzzanti was chairman of the Mitrokhin parliamentary commission, which was tasked with investigating the illegal activities of the Soviet secret services in Italy up until 1984. Guzzanti wanted to ascertain whether Romano Prodi had been a Russian agent. This was absolutely untrue, even though he had very close ties with Moscow through the Prometeia association. In his hunt for this evidence, Guzzanti found himself caught up in a clash between Russian spies who were in the habit of using polonium to eliminate troublesome figures. So much so that his car was kept well away from Berlusconi’s residence. And the men in my security detail kept their distance from Guzzanti’s security detail, for fear of being contaminated by any radiation. This was, and is, Putin."

"I have said before that there was a bond of psychological homosexuality between Berlusconi and Putin: they admired one another and theirs was a relationship of absolute equality. Putin regarded this Italian entrepreneur, who controlled the television networks and had managed to make a name for himself in politics, as a genius. In turn, Berlusconi regarded him as a pragmatist, capable of running a country like Russia and with whom one could do many things together: from business to women."

"Putin wanted to get back into the big game. And he used Berlusconi and his connections with the Americans to return to the inner circle from which Russia had been excluded after the end of the Soviet Union."

"Berlusconi completely failed to grasp Putin’s cultural background, which was shaped by figures such as Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible and Joseph Stalin. Each of these figures possessed a profoundly authoritarian streak, serving not to restore the Soviet Union but to perpetuate the myth of a Great Russia."

"Putin was the first to realise that the internet could be used to conduct politics and penetrate the system of liberal democracies—which he despises—in order to manipulate it. Through the internet, he backed Brexit, the Catalan independence referendum, Donald Trump’s election campaign and, most recently, the anti-vaxxers. He has always aimed to destabilise the West. But Berlusconi glossed over certain issues."

"A significant section of the West maintained that Putin was the head of the KGB with whom one could also do business. And whilst this was happening, Putin was invading Europe through his oligarchs, buying up football clubs, newspapers and political parties. No one wanted to see the dark side of the moon. Berlusconi didn’t, and neither did Prodi, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel... Shall I go on?"

"I cannot forget that he was the leader of the Socialists. In the Lega Nord, there is no one who belonged to the First Republic, and even many former members of the An cannot stomach this fact. Cicchitto was their opponent and now he is their group leader. It may suit him fine, but it annoys me that Berlusconi keeps inviting all the remnants of the First Republic."

"The investigations into Freemasonry and the links between lodges and the Mafia must lead to the political accountability of Ms Anselmi and her commission on P2. What has come to light was already known at the time, but Ms Anselmi, acting on behalf of the party system, refused to shed light on Freemasonry."

"I have always been opposed to abortion; for me, it is legalised murder. It is a position I have always held. But I have never spoken of reforming Law 194, partly because there is no reference to its reform in the government’s programme."

"Do we have millions of visitors? That was what I wanted; even the parks must generate revenue. I would never allow holiday homes to be built, but I insist that they turn a profit. I don’t like nature turned into a museum; the park is made for people. And if certain environmentalists aren’t happy, I’ll sleep just the same."

"Berlusconi’s leadership is not determined by the party constitution but by the voters, and anyone who doesn’t accept it is anti-democratic. No one has won the votes that Berlusconi has secured: An was a party with 14% support. The PDL is approaching 40%."

"(About the 150 km/h speed limit on motorways) It is not a government proposal. We supported it because, under certain safety conditions, it seems reasonable to us. But no one will put up a fight."

"(About tolls on previously free motorways) It is a measure that must be viewed within the context of the savings to be made in government spending. We pay Anas a sum for the maintenance and safety of the road network. Thanks to the increase in fees and tolls, which goes into Anas’s coffers, the state is reducing funding for maintenance. Do not ask me for the exact figure of these savings; it depends on how many cars and lorries will pass on those motorways or enter via those toll booths."

"Interviewer: Help us then to recall this assessment of P2, as it emerged from the work of the Anselmi Commission. Matteoli: Essentially, what can be said of that work is that of the names that emerged during the investigation – around a thousand – the vast majority were found to have no involvement whatsoever in subversive activities or corruption for political ends. About fifty remained, those we might call "freelancers", including several members of the Italian army, but the presence of the P2 Masonic lodge itself was very much in the minority. [...] To think today that the Italian state was afraid of someone like him (Licio Gelli) is almost laughable. As I said, he was a strange character, a curious figure who, whilst acting as a partisan, was against the partisans."

"Interviewer: Is Forza Italia no longer able to connect with its supporters? Matteoli: People didn’t make a different choice; they simply didn’t turn out to vote. Yes, we haven’t been able to connect with our supporters as we once did. Because there are MPs who just sit in Parliament, who have lost touch with the people, lulled into complacency by our leader’s ability to appear on TV: we must get back to doing politics, to engaging with the grassroots. FI must return to being the party of moderates that allies itself with the right and wins elections, which is what President Berlusconi has always wanted."

"[Anche se, stando all'articolo 70 della riforma, manterrà comunque una funzione legislativa paritaria in alcune materie di peculiare importanza (riforme e leggi costituzionali)] Oltre al superamento del bicameralismo paritario ed alla riduzione del numero dei parlamentari, gli altri tasselli basilari della Riforma concernono la revisione del Titolo V della parte seconda della Costituzione. Altresì importanti appaiono le modifiche al meccanismo d'elezione del Capo dello Stato. E quelle dei giudici della Corte Costituzionale. Poi si abbasserà il quorum per la validità dei Referendum abrogativi. Ma, purtroppo, le firme necessarie per proporre un disegno di legge ad iniziativa popolare saliranno dalle attuali 50mila, alle future 150mila. Anche se poi il Parlamento avrà l'obbligo di discutere e deliberare entro termini ben precisi"

"Interviewer: What did the MSI represent in the democratic history of this country? Matteoli: A testament to the preservation of indispensable values such as the family, a sense of nationhood, a Europe of nations, and the defence of small and medium-sized enterprises. Furthermore, the defence of the tradition that has led us to play a leading role on the world stage."

"Interviewer: Who were the most brilliant and influential figures in the history of the MSI? Matteoli: De Marsanich, Anfuso for foreign policy, Romualdi who was the first to speak of taking sides, Almirante for his courage and his charisma."

"Interviewer: Constitutional referendum: yes or no, and why? Matteoli: I would like, for example, voters to know before casting their vote in the referendum that the new Senate would have a variable composition, as mayors and regional councillors would remain in office only for the duration of their term, creating a situation of absolute uncertainty that would affect the passing of laws."

"Interviewer: The reform envisages moving beyond the perfect bicameral system that has been discussed for 30 years: right or wrong, and if so, for or against? Matteoli: The new Senate may, if it wishes, debate all proposals submitted for consideration by the Chamber of Deputies, with the potential to create, if not a complete blockage of legislative activity, delays worse than those of the current perfect bicameral system. I would also point out that the Senate will have to continue, as it does now, to approve laws in various sectors and constitutional laws. So talking about moving beyond perfect bicameralism is pure propaganda. [...] the risk that such demands in this forum will clash with the interests of other regions is equally clear. Reaching a consensus would become impossible."

"Interviewer: With the new Senate, seats and political costs are being cut: right or wrong, and if so, for or against? Matteoli: The savings would be truly insignificant, given that the apparatus would remain intact. This aspect of costs belongs more to Renzi’s propaganda than to reality."

"Interviewer: You'll have to get used to the idea if the Carroccio gets more votes than Forza Italia. Matteoli: In 2001, Casini and Fini challenged Berlusconi with these words: "The leader will be whoever gets the most votes". The voters rewarded our leader."

"Interviewer: Salvini warns you: either you agree with his proposals or you’re in for a rough ride. Matteoli: The problem isn’t his proposals, partly because some of them are reasonable. What’s unacceptable is the way he issues his diktat: we’ve never done that. Even when FI was at its strongest, we were always conciliatory. Berlusconi always reasoned, he tried to reach agreements."

"Interviewer: II Mattinale, the house organ of Brunetta, claims that Salvini wants to lead the centre-right into a mad dash with the fascists. Matteoli: It is foolish to still think of dividing politics between fascists and communists. I never felt like a fascist, not even when I was in the MSI. It is absurd to talk of fascism today, just as it is to say that Renzi wants to establish a dictatorship."

"Li abbiamo fregati con l'emendamento Carrara. Siamo cresciuti e siamo diventati più furbi di loro."

"[Maria Falcone e Rita Borsellino] hanno offeso la memoria dei loro eroici fratelli. Le due signore, entrambi militanti a sinistra con una disinvoltura che preferisco non commentare, hanno strumentalizzato due eroi civili che, per fortuna di tutti, sono patrimonio della collettività."

"The Supreme Court’s ruling finally does justice to Mr Previti. It is just a pity that it has taken more than ten years. We are delighted for our friend Cesare Previti and hope that this case will help shed light on the conduct of those who, for purely political reasons, have over the years denied the plain facts and the law."

"Sarò il garante di tutti, il massimo garante delle regole."

"[The judiciary] appeals to me most when it engages in a direct and uncompromising fight against the Mafia to dismantle its territorial structure by uprooting its deep-seated, toxic roots. I like it less, however, when certain individual magistrates, following convoluted and nebulous lines of inquiry and relying on statements from state witnesses who speak from hearsay, tend to put forward political theories by conjuring up ghosts from a distant past that allegedly saw conspiracies against the proper functioning of institutions."

"We are in the final stages of a tax reform. The public is well aware that once it is enacted, there will be no room for clemency."

"Craxi was a man who knew how to make decisions and with his government – remarkable in itself for its longevity, from 1983 to 1987 – he restored the central role and authority of Palazzo Chigi."

"The passage of time allows us to view the past with greater clarity and objectivity. It is up to each of us to reflect on Craxi and that dramatic period. He was shown no leniency; he paid more than anyone else for the failings of the entire political system of the time. He was a scapegoat."

"(About Cosa Nostra) We are all defeating it, but above all the Sicilians. Consciences and attitudes have changed. Before, there was fear and the code of silence; even obvious facts were denied, and the facts themselves were simply ignored. Of course, we had to pay a huge price with the deaths of people like Judges Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone. But all this has changed the conscience of the Sicilians."

"There is nothing worse than trivialisation and generalisation, which, unfortunately, Roberto Vecchioni has fallen into. From such a highly regarded singer-songwriter, we would have expected more profound and less stereotypical assessments, not least given the venue where he delivered his speech."

"Ho messo a fuoco i miei ricordi su Schifani e ne ho parlato ai magistrati perché già prima dell'attentato all'Olimpico sapevo che c'era una trattativa Stato-mafia. Quando ho visto Schifani in televisione e con incarichi politici, mi è venuto in mente che frequentava spesso il capannone di Brancaccio a Palermo dove Filippo Graviano si fermava a fare incontri. Ed ho ipotizzato che Schifani poteva essere l'anello di congiunzione per la trattativa."

"Apologising for the intrusion, and without wishing to spoil this fine atmosphere of bipartisan deference towards the new President of the Senate, Renato Schifani, we would like to offer a few biographical notes on the well-known statesman from Palermo who now presides where De Nicola, Paratore, Merzagora, Fanfani, Malagodi and Spadolini once sat. He is not a namesake of the man who insulted Rita Borsellino and Maria Falcone ("they make political use of their surname", sic) because they had protested when Berlusconi described magistrates as “mentally disturbed, anthropologically alien to the rest of the human race”: it is indeed him. He is not a namesake of the author of the unconstitutional ruling which, in 2003, granted impunity to the five highest offices of state, particularly one of them—namely Berlusconi—and verbally attacked Scalfaro in the Senate because he dared to dissent: it is still him."

"It is clear that if the political climate leads, shall we say, to a thaw in relations between the opposition and the new majority, Schifani has had friendships with mafia figures... I do not write that Schifani has had friendships with mafia figures because neither the right nor the left wants it, and what do I have to do with the right or the left? Let them take whatever political stance they wish, but I have to be a journalist. I have to report it; Lirio Abbate reported it in the book he wrote with Gomez, and he is rightly celebrated as a heroic journalist threatened by the Mafia. So, either they have the courage to say that Lirio Abbate is a scoundrel, a liar, or they have the courage to take note of what he writes about the second-highest office in the state, and simply ask the second-highest office in the state to explain those relationships with those gentlemen who were subsequently convicted of mafia involvement; instead, we, unfortunately, are simply following the political climate. If there were a clash, some would say: ‘Oh well, it suits the left, so I’ll write it.’ Today, when not even the left wants to hear about certain things, nobody talks about them anymore: it’s a tragedy."

"It is very instructive when the highest offices of state are filled, because the newspapers publish all the names of the figures who have held that office in the history of the Republic, and one realises – because it slips our minds when we see certain faces – that we once had De Gasperi, Einaudi, De Nicola, Merzagora, Parri, Pertini, Nenni... I don’t know, we could make a long list – Fanfani – I mean, you see the whole line-up, then you arrive and see Schifani. There’s an element of originality: the second-highest office in the state, Schifani. [...]"

"(About homoparentality) The natural family is under attack. They want to dominate us and wipe out our people."

"On the one hand, the weakening of the family and the push for same-sex marriage and gender theory in schools; on the other, the mass immigration we are enduring and the simultaneous emigration of our young people abroad. These are all interconnected and interdependent issues, because these factors aim to eradicate our community and our traditions. The risk is the eradication of our people."

"Salvini’s approach [to politics] is winning. Today, the revolution of common sense has begun."

"It is not a question of being friends with Trump or Putin, but the most desiderable option is that it will be a dialogue between them."

"If we are partners and allies in Europe, we must be so on equal terms. For too long we have endured subjugation to Germany and France within the European institutions."

"For my part, I have been favourably impressed by many of Putin’s statements and by the great Christian religious revival taking place in the country, undoubtedly the result of a reaction to seventy years of Soviet rule. I have seen in this a ray of hope for us Westerners too, who are experiencing a major crisis of values, immersed as we are in a society culturally dominated by ethical relativism, which can be ruthless, as the news of recent days shows."

"I wish to speak out in support of strengthening family planning institutes in an effort to dissuade women from having an abortion. I am Catholic; I make no secret of it."

"We have stated things we thought were normal, almost taken for granted: that for a country to grow, it needs people to have children; that a mother is called a mother (and not "parent 1"); that a father is called a father (and not "parent 2")."

"(About Roberto Maroni) His human warmth, his profound ability to analyse economic and social phenomena, together with his constant pursuit of dialogue and debate, were unanimously appreciated and recognised by both friends and political opponents."

"(About the 2022 Ischia landslide) This latest disaster demonstrates that the formulation and implementation of forward-looking policies to adapt to climate change—the effects of which are now plain for all to see—can no longer be postponed."

"Mr President, I would like to thank you for acknowledging that climate change is happening. I am very pleased to hear this, because there are some members of this majority who have in the past claimed that climate change does not exist. Recognising this means taking concrete action, in our own small way and within our country, to save many lives in the future."

"Sarò forse anche infantile, un po' fanciullesco, ma l’idea di vedere sfilare questo potente mezzo [il furgone cellulare in dotazione alla polizia penitenziaria] che dà il prestigio, con il Gruppo Operativo Mobile sopra, far sapere ai cittadini chi sta dietro a quel vetro oscurato, come noi sappiamo trattare chi sta dietro a quel vetro oscurato, come noi incalziamo chi sta dietro quel vetro oscurato, come noi non lasciamo respirare chi sta dietro quel vetro oscurato, credo sia una gioia... è sicuramente per il sottoscritto una intima gioia."

"I find it appalling that he should express delight at preventing those behind the windscreen of a prison van from breathing. These words are a clear reference to violence and torture against prisoners. Those in senior government positions cannot allow themselves to utter such remarks, which are so devoid of humanity."

"[...] The fact that President Giorgia Meloni is going to COP 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh and meeting with Egyptian President al-Sisi – to whom she utters not a single word regarding the tragedy of human rights violations, what happened to Zaki, or the death of Giulio Regeni – and is meeting al-Sisi to discuss oil and oil fields, shows exactly which side you are on in this country today."

"On the issue of energy strategy: I heard a representative of the Lega candidly argue that we must build more gas pipelines and we must build nuclear power stations. Well, let Italians know that this strategy is the strategy that will further reach into the pockets of Italians."

"Extra profits are Italians’ money and it is to them that they must be returned immediately. The profits belong to Italy, the profits do not belong to ENI."

"It is incomprehensible, unacceptable and, if I may say so, even indecent that, in the face of rising social poverty in the country, there should be a sort of indifference to the accumulation of wealth that the major energy companies have amassed in our country through windfall profits."

"(About the Meloni Government) So, dear social right – you who once called yourselves the social right and who today are the right of power – see how things change when you win the vote and enter government; you forget what you told the country [...]"

"[...] what struck me about Roberto Maroni was his friendliness, his ability to engage with those in front of him, with great simplicity and great humility, I must say, a trait that is very rare among those in important government roles."

"[Referring to Roberto Maroni] [...] for us, and I say this with the utmost sincerity, he was a tenacious and fair opponent."

"Let me be clear: Maroni is a decent person; we hold different views, and it is precisely for this reason that we accord him – and we salute him – the utmost respect."

"(Referring to Jair Bolsonaro) [...] he who is responsible for the devastation of the Amazon rainforest and the violation of human rights, and against whom the Brazilian Senate has filed a motion for impeachment for crimes against humanity."

"[...] we express our condolences for the victims of the tragic events in Ischia, but, you see, we are also very tired, tired of having to comment on these tragic events which are linked to a climate crisis that produces extreme weather events [...]"

"(To Gilberto Pichetto Fratin) You said that mayors should be arrested for what they do, a very strong statement: I would like to point out, however, that you are part of a party that has approved two building amnesties in this country."

"[...] the geological map of our country has not been drawn up; it does not exist, unlike in many European countries. Out of 636 sheets, 300 are missing because there is no money. Money is found for so many things, but there is no money to make our country safe; we would need geologists."

"[To Gilberto Pichetto Fratin] Do you know that the term building amnesty is untranslatable in Europe, because they simply don’t know what it means? You have normalised it, and today you did not have the courage to make a commitment in the Italian Parliament and say: no more building amnesties."

"I find it appalling that (Andrea Delmastro Delle Vedove) expresses joy at not letting those behind the glass of a prison police car breathe. These words are a clear reference to violence and torture against prisoners. Those in top government roles cannot allow themselves to utter such statements devoid of humanity."

"Corruption has always been a constant companion of humankind. After all, Catholic culture itself teaches us: without money, there are no Masses. Think of the Peter's Pence collection. The challenge for us politicians, and for all those who administer public affairs in general, is to navigate our own path towards God by seeking mediation."

"The truth is that when Christian Democrats die, everyone applauds them and some even wanted to canonise them, yet when they are alive, everyone wants to claim the lion's share for themselves. Some time ago, Berlusconi chose Scajola to reorganise himself politically, and now he has chosen Angelino Alfano. Similarly, when the Democratic Party was formed, it elected Rosy Bindi as its president. This shows that political Catholicism is a breeding ground for the ruling class."

"The European cultures that govern the member states are the environmentalist, liberal, socialist and Christian democratic cultures. In Italy, these cultures are currently absent, due to a form of bipolarity that is not political but rather linked to electoral technicalities. We are the only Western country where there is a majority bonus. There is only one precedent in the country's history: the Acerbo Law. Indeed, Mussolini did not even make use of it, as he received 65 per cent of the vote and the majority bonus was not triggered."

"Consent is won by promising a great deal and always delivering, but in dribs and drabs."

"This scoundrel (Antonio Di Pietro) said that the growth of the 1980s was linked to the world of bribes."

"If it weren't for the great comedian, now somewhat on the wane, namely Grillo, how many people would have had the opportunity to enter Parliament with the M5S?"

"Indeed, we were wrong not to speak out against the costs of politics, and none of us has become rich. We took refuge behind hypocrisy. But we paid the price for the fact that, for us Catholics in the Christian Democrats and for the Communists, money was the Devil's dung. We should have told the truth about the enormous cost of election campaigns. Besides, those who financed me were all friends; it was perfectly well known who was supporting me. Craxi also said this in his famous speech in Parliament. But, in hindsight, it can be said that many of the accusations against that ruling class were exaggerated."

"My mother was a woman of great faith. When my second brother, Mariano, died at the age of 33, and I broke the news to her, she turned to a painting of Our Lady of Pompeii and said through her tears: 'I don't understand You, but I entrust him to You.' That testimony has stayed with us through many other tragic moments."

"(Referring to Salvini) Those who wave rosaries in the streets should also remember that Hell exists."

"The best trick is to tell the truth – no one believes it anyway."

"Let's not insult the First Republic; there is absolutely nothing that resembles it. There is a political leader, Salvini, who actually demands full powers, creates a government crisis and then, however, says: We can continue working."

"That has never happened. Then there is a Prime Minister who gives full powers to one of his ministers in an emergency – in the First Republic, if anything, it was the Council of Ministers that would decide on such a measure. A precedent that does not exist."

"Interviewer: Why did you title your book on the Second Republic? Pomicino: It’s a metaphor to describe the new political situation after the Mani Pulite operation. We suddenly became a country devoid of any political culture. Indeed, we are the only European country that does not have a liberal, socialist, green or Christian democratic party. Responsibility lay with the old PCI which, by promoting the use of the judiciary to defeat the parties of the true centre-left, worked to obliterate everyone’s political culture, having lost its own."

"Interviewer: The operation Clean Hands was a consequence of the fall of the Berlin Wall? Pomicino: Not only did the Communist Party end up under its rubble, but, thanks to the 'Via Pal' team at the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office, so did the parties that had won the battle of history. Mani Pulite was orchestrated by the shareholder bourgeoisie led by De Benedetti. De Benedetti believed he would be the new leader of the country’s future government, which would bring together the financial and industrial elite from the upper echelons of Italian capitalism and the PCI of Achille Occhetto and Luciano Violante, which still had a strong local presence."

"Interviewer: Little has been said about this plan in the newspapers or in historical accounts. Pomicino: In 1992, when the centre-left secured 55% of the vote, a Socialist-led parliamentary term was due to begin, with a Christian Democrat as President of the Republic. This political configuration was not to the liking of US intelligence and of the faction comprising the PCI and the shareholder bourgeoisie, which dreamed of making a fortune by selling off, or rather, selling at a loss, 25% of the publicly owned Italian economy to international financial groups. One only needs to read Giuseppe Guarino's memoirs to realize this."

"Interviewer: A sell-off that ultimately did indeed take place. Pomicino: Today, it has been completed. However, instead of consolidating public finances, the debt has tripled, rising in current terms from €839 billion in 1991 to €2,400 billion today, with the middle class suffering severe impoverishment."

"While it is true that, in the US, one person dies every minute due to a shortage of organs for transplantation and that the country needs to find a solution to this pressing issue, it is also essential to safeguard the rights and wishes of individuals who, while still mentally competent, have considered the sensitive question of how they wish to be cared for (or not cared for) in the final stages of their lives and how they wish their body to be disposed of. The new measures have received enthusiastic support from a large part of the US transplant community, despite bioethics experts warning of the risk that the law could turn individuals who would not have wished to do so into organ donors, force certain family members to accept decisions they do not agree with, and even encourage doctors not to administer certain medications to terminally ill patients for fear of damaging the quality of organs that would otherwise be available for harvesting and transplantation. These concerns may be exaggerated, but they are entirely legitimate. For decades, efforts have been made to close the gap between organ demand and supply, but this does not mean that we should not proceed with the utmost caution. It may seem obvious to point out a fundamental principle, but we must always bear in mind that it is not acceptable to place more value on one life than on another – in this case, on the life of a man or woman on the transplant waiting list than on the life of a person who is nearing the end of their life on an intensive care unit. We must act with caution, demonstrating that the ultimate concern is always, and only, the respect and health of citizens, at whatever stage of life they are, at whatever age, and in whatever situation."

"Indeed, throughout human history, the end of life has always coincided with the cessation of the heartbeat: every hero worthy of the name has died because their heart stopped beating. Literature, works of art, and old medical textbooks provide ample evidence of this. [...] With the first cardiac surgery procedures and the invention of extracorporeal circulation, it became clear that the function of the heart could be replaced by an artificial mechanism: the person continued to live without a beating heart in his chest, as long as blood continued to flow to their brain. Doctors had recorded numerous signs, and the idea that the brain played a crucial role in human life was already well established. Based on these assumptions, a debate developed at Harvard that brought together not only doctors but also lawyers, philosophers and representatives of different faiths, as the aim was to find a definition of death that took into account the ethical concerns and the context at a given point in history. Since the Harvard guidelines, death is certified when all vital brain functions have irreversibly ceased."

"Therefore, the new definition of death was not merely the result of a discussion between scientists; above all, it was the first shared bioethical statement to have a tangible impact worldwide. Indeed, brain death formed the basis for the development of transplant medicine as we know it today; it enabled organ donation and harvesting from donors whose hearts were still beating. And it is thanks to that work that, today, tens of thousands of organ transplants are performed worldwide each year, and that, thanks to this treatment, countless patients who would otherwise be facing certain death are saved. Therefore, the definition of death is based on scientific certainties that there is no reason to question. Moreover, it is clear that if a doctor had the slightest doubt about a person's death, they would never proceed with organ harvesting."

"Some people currently argue that the definition of death should be revised in light of the technological innovations that have transformed the world of medicine. Personally, I believe that the way in which the end of life is defined is scientifically correct. More importantly, however, I believe that if anyone has doubts, they should raise them in the appropriate forums and present the scientific arguments that support their position to everyone. Otherwise, suggesting that an individual who has hitherto been defined as dead is no longer dead is an irresponsible act that risks jeopardising the opportunity to save hundreds of thousands of lives through post-mortem organ donation, a generous act motivated solely by a sense of solidarity between human beings."

"In the USA, I have always refused to perform transplants from altruistic donors, although such transplants were carried out, albeit rarely, at the centres I have managed. On the other hand, I have always supported, performed and encouraged transplants from living donors with whom there is an emotional bond. I am not convinced that it is right to subject someone who is not related to the recipient to the risk of surgery. I wouldn't go so far as to ban them, but I'm not convinced that they are an ethical approach or a solution to the appallingly long waiting lists, especially for kidney transplants."

"I said that five years ago, the then mayor, (Gianni Alemanno) , ran for office with a campaign focused on the issue of security. He had a vision of a film, the 'sheriff mayor' film, but it turned into a different film, the 'all talk and no action' sheriff film."