Philosophers From Italy

"“If we cannot take away all the grief, all the evil, all the death, we will start with loving everyone, trying ourselves not to give the grief, the evil, the death, with the faith that the rest of the grief, evil and death will disappear.”"

"“This is the reason why we are not satisfied with a small or a big partial reform, because we want a total change. And if we do our utmost to use pure means and to maintain an honest and loving conscience, this will be the offer we can make and the guarantee that we can have that a total liberation will take place.”"

"“History must change and today we see our problems in a different light, we say that our revolution today here and straightaway has something different, because it is made together with everybody, with our spirit united to everyone, even those not here, it is revolution for everybody and with everybody, not excluding and not destroying for ever, and not eternally damning anyone. It is a choral revolution.”"

"“We can say to the other revolutionaries: you are right to be dissatisfied with this society with its erroneous and unjust ways, but how can you change everything straightaway with your own hands? Do you want to destroy the persons whom you see as adversaries, and even those who you suspect of not being revolutionary? Do you want the revolution to go forward with massacres, torture, the absolute power of a group, which prevents other people from speaking, informing themselves or criticizing or even living? We want a society founded on love and shall we start with cultivating and stimulating hatred? We want a free society and should we increase tyranny and absolutism? We want a good and clean end and should we use dirty and terrible means?”"

"“Nonviolence does good to those who practice it and receive it: it makes each other better, lifts them up, unites them.”"

"“The person who is dedicated to nonviolence is more active than anyone, because he does not only want to overcome indifference and hatred, weariness and egoism within himself, but he wants to overcome anything which divides and hurts all people and therefore the person dedicated to nonviolence does not accept society as it is”."

"“The important thing is to understand that in the struggle for freedom and Socialism the uniting revolutionary element was violence (which then was impairing the freedom and Socialism); now instead we add as the revolutionary uniting element this passion for nonviolent activity open to total liberation”."

"“The open revolution changes also the spirit of man, the relationship between man and man, because it changes the method of struggle. Therefore it brings a total transformation of power economy and nature”."

"“By now the idea is spreading that revolutions so far are not enough and we must develop a revolution which will remedy their faults and go a step forward. This new revolution is the open revolution”."

"“I long to live in a manifold of duty and individuals, to grasp things at their source, not taking them for granted as coming from an unknown and unchangeable origin. I long to experience things in depth and nearness, because through depth and nearness I realize the centre of reality. The whole of history shows me that this is possible. Formerly it would have been said that it was not possible, that we had to await death. Today I will die at every moment to rise again with God, at the centre of reality.”"

"“In my inner self, where is duality, I am heard.”"

"“Thus the more readily we accept grief, the deeper in us the awakening of the love which is not attachment but a positive serenity, pure and full of faith, the infinite in a loving act, even though in bitterness and tears.”"

"“Always implicit in religion is thus a confession of finiteness and limitation. We experience this limitation when we weep, our lament arising from our inability to love fully.”"

"“If in our life and spiritual experience we have become accustomed to transcending our particular individuality, thus realising more clearly in our faith the universal and liberating value of this act, free from any objectivistic idolatry and if we centre down in our soul, in the reality of all things and all persons, then our meeting with death will be more serene, because already in our life we will have overcome the feeling of our limits as something terrible, insuperable and absolute. Absolute instead will be the act performed in the self, the celebration of God’s presence.”"

"“Even the death we feel approaching is not absolute but only incidental. At that moment we perform yet another act. The act is the form, the way in which death is faced.”"

"“Grief like anything else – like a stone – is content only; God gives us the form, that serenity, purity and self-possession with which to surround and live grief.”"

"“Thus God is not to be lived in contemplation but in acts, in actual practice. In giving of our best, in the intrinsic value of every act, God descends as person and strengthens us.”"

"“God involves continuous awareness of finiteness, supreme capacity to feel grief, the renouncing of divine attributes in order to become pure giving, infinite love, redemption and consolation.”"

"“The fundamental importance of the inner self frees us from the conception of evolution as a purely natural process. The Spirit is not something, which evolves before our eyes, flowing as if it were a river. This is a naturalistic conception of the Spirit, which ignores the inner self as that centre through which everything passes, in whose moral conscience all reality is idealised. If reality evolved by itself there would be no place to speak of duty and conscience. But God does not consist in being, but in choosing. We cannot define God because we can experience him only in the present and in the act which comes from our inner self.”"

"“Every act involves a discovery of finite beings and seeing them as such, one understands ever better the reality of God’s presence, since finiteness by itself would be insufficient. God is the continuous miracle. It may be said that if it is continuous it is no longer a miracle. But miracle there is, although it does not consist in any outstanding or exceptional event. The miracle is that without God all finite things and their mutual relationships fade away into abstractions – whereas with God, they live in our spirit, in a conscious relationship. The essential construction of reality lies in this and not in the activism of the materialists who have little awareness of the intimate religious relationship.”"

"“This spiritual freedom, the opposite of insensitivity or laziness, freedom to suffer and to know error, is the nearness and very redemption of God.”"

"“We approach one another as if we were separate entities and see the other only from a limited point of view – not as part of us; we do not open ourselves to others with complete faith. When we first encounter objects or persons we think, because of this feeling of separateness, that they are just as we find them and nothing else. But if my attitude towards this person is of love, interest, oneness, then I will lose that first impression of having accidentally found them and will grow beyond my limitations towards something at once more intimate and more vast.”"

"“I conceive the essential relationship between God and the world to be not one of power and violence, as might think the primitive man, who worships physical strength and imagines that it is a superior power shaking the earth with earthquakes or hurling a thunderbolt through space; it is nearness, something which might seem insignificant but which brings spiritual awareness.”"

"The true synthesis is only with the unforeseen."

"From here the sure beginning of infinity,"

"To confess to freedom, the highest habit;"

"Oh special day, unveil your essence which redeems –"

"Beyond the tragic blows and the brooding over violence,"

"I am reborn when I say a * “thou”."

"From a high tower I have looked to the four points of the horizon."

"I wanted to go away, in the midst of something entirely different,"

"And you mother still close to me,"

"Tyrants in the course of time must eventually be overthrown because of the continual opposition of the oppressed. It is an unchanging Law, a constant rule, the penalty is certain, albeit that it is very slow coming to fruition."

"If You return to earth, come armed Lord, because enemies are preparing other crosses —not Turks, not Jews—but those of Your own kingdom"

"[A]udacious Titan of the modern age, possessing essentially a combative intellect; a poet and philosopher militant, who stood alone making war upon the authority of Aristotle in science, of Machiavelli in statecraft, and of Petrarch in art."

"I learn more from the anatomy of an ant or a blade of grass...than from all the books which have been written since the beginning of time. This is so, since I have begun...to read the book of God...the model according to which I correct the human books which have been copied badly and arbitrarily and without attention to the things that are written in the original book of the Universe."

"The world is the book where the eternal Wisdom wrote its own concepts"

"Io per mi pensava che in un giovine l’esser innamorato fusse il condimento di tutte le sue virtù, e che se ben alcun fusse una profonda sentina di vitii, Amor fusse bastante a sollevarlo in un momento fino a le stelle."

"Il mondo va invecchiando e peggiorando di mano in mano."

"Acque quete fan le cose."

"Pochi servidori si trovano che per danari non si corrompano."

"Prendiam il dolce ognihor che torlo accade, Se ben d’amar alquanto ivi gustiamo; Ch’ al mondo huom mai non è beato a pieno."

"L’oro è quello che abbaglia gli occhi delle donne."

"Alle spese del compagno non si può imparare."

"Contrastan le donne per esser vinte."

"Chi ama, si fida in tutto e per tutto della cosa amata."

"L’amor non si paga se non con amore."

"Chi scrive in una lingua abbondante, è come un uomo che ha molti habiti, altri per usi domestici, altri per prodursi in pubblico, altri per le feste solenni."

"Una parola o forma di dire non è buona perchè è nel Vocabulario, ma è nel Vocabulario perchè era buona anche prima di esservi."

"Un metodo può condurre a conseguenze sempre vere, quantunque esso sia forse derivato da un principio falso."