People From New York City

"As an entrepreneur you have responsibilities in trying to operate well in what you have to do. There is a positive effect if you end up doing that. That’s where I try to spend most of my efforts."

"Artists have a sensibility that others don't have. They have a way of reading into the future."

"I was born in New York, then I went to the UK, then I went to Brazil, then I went to France, then I studied in Italy. My life was always about being confronted with an environment where you had to adapt."

"(talking about his children) I'm interested in avoiding two types of behaviour: one is the sense of guilt and the other is a sense of entitlement. If these two are avoided, then the rest is up to them."

"Responsibility is something that you have. And I've, I've personally always felt responsible, felt responsible since a very, very early age as we were growing up in many different countries and we had divorced parents and were very much very close to my siblings. And always trying to be responsible in school settings, sport settings and taking on responsibility was definitely something that I always was drawn to. Difficulties are the moments in which you can show courage and you can show responsibility for others. And over the course of more than 20, so getting close to 30 years, that I've been involved as a director of Fiat back in 1997, there have been many moments of time where that responsibility was acted on."

"I am a big believer of what Darwin discovered in the Galapagos, proving that the species most responsive to change will survive over apparently stronger or more intelligent competitors."

"We have been reflecting on the journey we have taken since the foundation of FIAT back in 1899 because, though we are proud of our past achievements, we are most interested in what we can learn from them, and also what we can learn from our mistakes."

"Today Gianni would be disappointed as all we Ferrari fans are. But I am optimistic because we have two young drivers: they are not 'used to winning' but they have a great desire to 'train to win' with their humility and determination, they are infecting the whole team with this."

"Juventus is a great love, and this is its secret. A love from everyone, and obviously from my family, which is passed down from generation to generation; these colors are part of my children's lives too."

"LaStampa has always been a free newspaper because of its economical sustainability, and we're proud of it. It's the only way for a newspaper to be independent."

"Farrakhan is one person, one black person. Why is it that no black person seems to be rabid about Meir Kahane? Farrakhan is rejected by a lot of black people who wouldn't go near that man. It's not an equal standard-one black person is all black people."

"Many things are linked to being able to live with uncertainty, ...with paradoxes. But this can be a strength of an organisation and a situation."

"A great CEO is someone who's really interested in the job, not the title. And who's really interested in competing in the pure sense of what it means, and really likes not only the company, but likes the people with whom he works. A great CEO is also someone who has the ability of thinking long term, but also acting now. Being strategic, but yet being operational."

"To me, technology serves as an answer to the curiosity of humans. Looking back to history, human curiosity has driven progress, increased awareness, and knowledge, ultimately leading to the discovery of new applications that we now define as technology."

"I say the Arabs must leave Israel, precisely because I believe if the Arabs stay, they'll become the 'good Arabs' as I understand the term."

"The question is as follows: if the Arabs settle among us and make enough children to become a majority, will Israel continue to be a Jewish state? Do we have to accept that the Arab majority will decide? Obviously, nobody in Israel can accept this. Because to accept this would amount to being anti-Zionist!"

"Every Arab is a proud Arab, a good nationalist. And because of this, he is opposed to the existence of the state of Israel."

"Western democracy has to be ruled out. For me that’s cut and dried: there’s no question of setting up democracy in Israel, because democracy means equal rights for all, irrespective of racial or religious origins. Therefore democracy and Zionism cannot go together. And Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed this state to be a Jewish state, is a totally schizophrenic document. You just can’t, on the one hand, want a Jewish state and at the same time give non-Jews the right to become a majority."

"I prefer a powerful and proud Jewish State that is hated by the entire world than an Auschwitz that is loved by one and all."

"There is no greater anti-Semite than the Jewish one, and none hates the Jewish people more than the Jewish traitor and apostate."

"The poor Palestinians who today kill Jews with explosives and firebombs and stones are part of the same people who when they had all the territories they now demand be given to them for their state -attempted to drive the Jewish state into the sea."

"Today I view Sharon and Kahane and the Gush Emunim not simply as examples of the weaknesses of our yidishe mentshlekhkayt, Jewish humanness, but as a political evil. Some of my friends challenge this view as extreme. But I believe it. Kahane and Sharon are not concerned with Jewish values, Jewish security, Jewish survival. I don't believe that their policies are motivated by Jewish fears of annihilation. There are, I know, many Israeli Jews whose refusal to accept a Palestinian state is rooted in real fears, some of which I share. And because of this, I see their position differently, even though I strongly disagree with it. However, Kahane and his kind express blatant racism, chauvinism, a hunger for military power, a greed for territory, an insistence on religious and cultural supremacy. These can be easily analyzed as originating in feelings of inadequacy and insecurity and even fears of annihilation. Yet they are manifested in such hatred of Palestinians, such callous indifference to non-Jews and non-Jewish culture that I do not consider these "psychological roots" of fascism legitimate concerns. And so I continue viewing Kahane and his politics as an evil that impinges on my Jewishness because they actively try to redefine and reshape it through the actions and policies of the Jewish State. Everything Jewish in me resists their efforts."

"The advice to young people is, first of all, they need to be optimistic about the future because the future is theirs and they have the responsibility of building that future. And that's not daunting, it's exciting. On a more practical, I think the advice that my grandfather gave me remains true. To listen and ask questions, and in some ways curiosity and learning are really what you need to start young at."

"He is extremely intelligent and has a great sense of responsibility. I've seen, in the past few years, he has managed several crises with extreme dignity and wisdom."

"The logic and necessity of the new generation — and what they are so furiously opposed to — must be seen against a background of what has gone wrong in America. It must be understood in light of the betrayal and loss of the American dream, the rise of the Corporate State of the 1960's, and the way in which that State dominates, exploits, and ultimately destroys both nature and man. Its rationality must be measured against the insanity of existing "reason" — reason that makes impoverishment, dehumanization, and even war appear to be logical and necessary. Its logic must be read from the fact that Americans have lost control of the machinery of their society, and only new values and a new culture can restore control. Its emotions and spirit can be comprehended only by seeing contemporary America through the eyes of the new generation."

"We seem to be living in a society that no one created and that no one wants."

"There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual and with culture, and it will change the political structure only as its final act. It will not require violence to succeed, and it cannot be successfully resisted by violence. It is now spreading with amazing rapidity, and already our laws, institutions and social structure are changing in consequence. It promises a higher reason, a more human community, and a new and liberated individual. Its ultimate creation will be a new and enduring wholeness and beauty — a renewed relationship of man to himself, to other men, to society, to nature, and to the land. This is the revolution of the new generation."

"To the American people of 1789, their nation promised a new way of life: each individual a free man; each having the right to seek his own happiness; a republican form of government in which the people would be sovereign; and no arbitrary power over people's lives. Less than two hundred years later, almost every aspect of the dream has been lost."

"If there was any doubt about the need for social transformation in 1970, that need is clear and urgent today. … I am now more convinced than ever that the conflict and suffering now threatening to engulf us are entirely unnecessary, and a tragic waste of our energy and resources. We can create an economic system that is not at war with human beings or nature, and we can get from here to there by democratic means."

"My goal in life is to make people think. If I do that, I've been a success."

"The American dream was not, at least at the beginning, a rags-to-riches type of narrow materialism."

"America is dealing death, not only to people of other lands, but to its own people. So say the most thoughtful and passionate of our youth, from California to Connecticut."

"In Rome much pamphleteering took the form of verses and songs, circulated orally, or of libelli , defamatory placards or broadsheets (whence our word "libel")."

"And nothing inhibited fourth-century orators in the assembly and the law-courts from indulging in savage slander, without a touch of humour in it."

"A genuinely political society, in which discussion and debate are an essential technique, is a society full of risks."

"It's reasonable to offer benefits."

"" man is by nature designed to live in the polis, the highest form of koinonia, community; that is man's end or goal if he achieves the full potentiality of his nature."

"One of the problems with fame … is they try to pigeonhole you… like I’m stuck with The Greening of America for the rest of my life."

"The great crime of our time, says Vonnegut, was to do too much good secretly, too much harm openly."

"Historical explanation is not identical with moral judgment."

"Faction is the greatest evil and the most common danger. "Faction" is the conventional English translation of the Greek stasis, one of the most remarkable words to be found in any language."

"If I had to choose one which best characterized the condition of being a political leader in Athens, the word would be "tension"."

"From Aristophanes to Aristotle, the attack on the demagogues always falls back on the one central question: in whose interest does the the leader lead?"

"for it is conflict combined with consent, not consent alone, which preserves democracy from eroding into oligarchy."

"We must consider not only why the classical theory of democracy appears to be in contradiction with the observed practice, but also why the many different responses to this observation, though mutually incompatible, all share the belief that democracy is the best form of political organization."

"Political leaders, lacking documents that could be kept secret (apart from the occasional exception), lacking media they could control, were of necessity brought into a direct and immediate relationship with their constituents, and therefore under more and direct and immediate control."

"What is good for a country? What is the national interest?"

"The Athenians made mistakes. Which governmental system has not? The familiar game of condemning Athens for not having lived to some ideal of perfection is a stultifying approach."

"In the western world today everyone is a democrat."

"Perhaps the best known, and certainly the most vaunted, "discovery" of modern public opinion research is the indifference and ignorance of a majority of the electorate in western democracies."