People From Rome

"WHAT is truth?" said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Pilate was in advance of his time. For "truth" itself is an abstract noun, a camel, that is, of a logical construction, which cannot get past the eye even of a grammarian. We approach it cap and categories in hand: we ask ourselves whether Truth is a substance (the Truth, the Body of Knowledge), or a quality (something like the colour red, inhering in truths), or a relation ("correspondence"). But philosophers should take something more nearly their own size to strain at. What needs discussing rather is the use, or certain uses, of the word "true." In vino, possibly, "veritas," but in a sober symposium "verum."

"Do I still need to say that in the whole of the New Testament there is only one honourable figure? Pilate, the Roman governor. To take Jewish affairs seriously — he could not convince himself to do this. One Jew more or less — what does it matter? ... The noble scorn of a Roman when faced with an unashamed mangling of the word 'truth' gave the New Testament its only statement of any value, — its critique, even its annihilation: 'What is truth!' ..."

"Where else, then, can we get it? "Nowhere," Pilate answers in his talk with Jesus. "What is truth?" he asks, expressing in these three words his own and his contemporaries’ despair of truth, expressing also the despair of truth in millions of our contemporaries, in schools and studios, in business and professions. In all of us, open or hidden, admitted or repressed, the despair of truth is a permanent threat. We are children of our period as Pilate was. Both are periods of disintegration, of a world-wide loss of values and meanings. Nobody can separate himself completely from this reality, and nobody should even try. Let me do something unusual from a Christian standpoint, namely, to express praise of Pilate—not the unjust judge, but the cynic and sceptic; and of all those amongst us in whom Pilate’s question is alive. For in the depth of every serious doubt and every despair of truth, the passion for truth is still at work. Don’t give in too quickly to those who want to alleviate your anxiety about truth. Don’t be seduced into a truth which is not really your truth, even if the seducer is your church, or your party, or your parental tradition. Go with Pilate, if you cannot go with Jesus; but go in seriousness with him!"

"Whom do you want me to release for you: Barabbas or Jesus called Christ?"

"What then shall I do with Jesus called Christ?"

"What evil has he done?"

"Do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?"

"What then shall I do with the one you call the King of the Jews?"

"Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man!"

"But what evil has he done?"

"I am not responsible for this blood; you take care of it!"

"Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”"

"It is too early to assess the policies of the new German government. I can only say that the crisis has shown that the monetary union is incomplete and that the weaknesses need to be remedied. Germany helps the euro best by further strengthening its competitiveness and promoting growth."

"Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough. (26 July 2016, speech to Global Investment Conference in London)"

"One needs a complex package of policies and, as we always stress, structural reforms come first, because many of the problems of the euro area are structural. And I'm sure that's also the biggest fear for the Governing Council as a whole. We discussed the possibility of negative deposit rates, but our objective is maintaining price stability."

"In Greece, the position at the outset was particularly difficult, so now we have to be particularly patient with the country. That's no surprise."

"The crisis has not been overcome, but there are many encouraging signs. The economy is recovering in many countries, the imbalances in European trade are declining and the budget deficits in the monetary union are falling."

"The signals from the monetary analysis confirm the picture of subdued underlying price pressures in the euro area over the medium term."

"ECB [European Central Bank] President Mario Draghi’s famous promise to do ‘whatever it takes’ to preserve the eurozone was a masterly move to buy time. But monetary policy cannot solve the currency union’s problems."

"Our friendship goes back many decades, to when we shared a common plane. Over the years, over the decades, I have had enormous respect for Mr. Draghi. He has had an extraordinary capacity for intellectual analysis of issues that focused on the common good and not just the immediate. [He is the] symbol of a generational challenge. [He has carried out] extraordinarily complicated tasks because it was believed, and it turned out to be correct, that he would analyze the problems and not approach them from a biased position. [He is] a man with a unique ability to analyze situations and contribute to their solution."

"The gap between countries that embrace innovation and those that hesitate, Draghi explained, will widen significantly in the coming years, which is why Europe is now facing a moment of truth: over the last twenty years, we have gone from being a continent that welcomed new technologies, narrowing the gap with the United States, to one that has progressively placed barriers to innovation and its adoption. We have already seen this in the first phase of the digital revolution, when European productivity growth fell to about half the US rate, with almost all of the divergence coming from the technology sector. Now this pattern is repeating itself with the artificial intelligence revolution. Last year, the United States produced 40 major fundamental models, China 15, and the European Union only three. The same pattern can be observed in many other frontier technologies, from biotechnology to advanced materials to nuclear fusion. [...] Economic history indicates that mass unemployment is not the most likely outcome. Previous technological revolutions suggest this."

"... "the Continent's traditional social contract" - perhaps its major contribution to contemporary civilization - "is obsolete" and must be dismantled."

"(Italian language) L'appello a non vaccinarsi è un appello a morire sostanzialmente - non ti vaccini, ti ammali, muori - oppure fai morire - non ti vaccini, ti ammali, contagi lui lei muore -, questo è."

"In the early 1950s Franco Modigliani, with Richard Brumberg and , formulated the life-cycle theory of consumption and savings that enjoyed a huge and undisputed success for at least three decades. It replaced Keynes’s ‘fundamental psychological law’ of savings, according to which the marginal and average propensities to save grow as income rises. On the other hand, the life-cycle theory maintains that the level of savings depends on the age of consumers, and hence on the demographic structure of society rather than on the level of family income."

"I believe people can solve complex problems eventually. By repeated trial and error they will get there; but they need a long time. At this point I agree with Herbert Simon. People do not learn immediately, as those rational expectations models seem to imply. I don't believe that. The statement that assumptions do not matter is nonsense. It is funny. Yes, I assume people are consistent in their behavior. I assume that not because I believe everybody actually is, but because I believe, on the average, you do not get too far from it."

"A situation where people can grow old without having a job that rewards them individually while adding to the collective well-being is morally unacceptable."

"Macro rational expectations, as I have labeled the hypothesis, seems to say that expectations in an economist's model must be perfectly consistent with his model that embodies these expectations. In other words, the agents of his model must all share his views of the relevant economic mechanisms, as well as his data. Why? Because if he holds them they must believe they are God's truth and, if so, rational people can have no other views (and of course we should never ask how they would come by these views and data, that not even other specialists may have heard of yet, let alone accepted). I submit that this view is pretty absurd--I would almost say offensive! I certainly believe that I know more about economics and the economy than (almost) everybody else, and i can even prove it: If everybody shared my vies, then the economy could not be in today's troubles (though it might conceivably be in some different ones!)."

"What is the "cost of capital" to a, firm in a world in which funds are used to acquire assets whose yields are uncertain; and in which capital can be obtained by many different media, ranging from pure debt instruments, representing money-fixed claims, to pure equity issues, giving holders only the right to a pro-rata share in the uncertain venture? This question has vexed at least three classes of economists: (1) the corporation finance specialist concerned with the techniques of financing firms so as to ensure their survival and growth; (2) the managerial economist concerned with capital budgeting; and (3) the economic theorist concerned with explaining investment behavior at both the micro and macro levels."

"The life cycle of family size, at least in the U.S., has a very humped shape rather similar to that of income, though with a somewhat earlier peak. As a result, one might expect, and generally finds a fairly constant rate of saving in the central age group, but lower saving or even dissaving in the very young or old."

"Modigliani's theory was a powerful searchlight on what was happening... It is the best explanation of what has actually been happening in the great swing of American life since the 1950's."

"Who told Jesus? Who told Jesus Christ, Mary’s son?"

"The Christian movement began with John the Baptist. … In his recorded teaching to the people there is not a word about the customary ritual of religion, about increased Sabbath observance, about stricter washings and sacrifices, or the ordinary exercises of piety. He spoke only of repentance, of ceasing from wrongdoing. He hailed the professional exponents of religion who came to hear him, as a brood of snakes wriggling away from the flames of the judgment. ... The way to prepare for the Messianic era and to escape the wrath of the Messiah was to institute a brotherly life and to equalize social inequalities."

"What did you go out into the wilderness to behold?"

"And Yuhana [John the Baptist] said to Manda ḏ-Hiia: “A thousand thousand people have I brought down into the river, myriads on myriads of souls have I baptized in the waters. A man like thee has yet not passed through my hands.”"

"John . . . was a good man and had exhorted the Jews to lead righteous lives, to practice justice towards their fellows and piety towards God, and so doing to join in baptism. In his view this was a necessary preliminary if baptism was to be acceptable to God. They must not employ it to gain pardon for whatever sins they committed, but as a consecration of the body implying that the soul was already thoroughly cleansed by right behavior."

"Quid autem aliud Ioannes nisi honestatem consideravit? ut inhonestas nuptias etiam in rege non posset perpeti, dicens: Non licet tibi illam uxorem habere. Potuit tacere, nisi indecorum sibi iudicasset mortis metu verum non dicere, inclinare regi propheticam auctoritatem, adulationem subtexere. Sciebat utique moriturum se esse, quia regi adversabatur: sed honestatem saluti praetulit. Et tamen quid utilius quam quod passionis viro sancto advexit gloriam?"

"Non licet tibi habere eam"

"For I say to you, among those born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he."

"In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”"

"Manda ḏ-Hiia went to Yuhana [John] the Baptist and spoke to him: “Arise Yuhana, baptize me with thy baptism, which thou used to baptize with, and pronounce over me that name that thou used to pronounce.”"

"«There are moments when Caterina is Duchampian with the digital medium, as in “UFOp (Unidentified Flying Objects Poetry)” (1999) and in “Poem in Red” (2004). You can think of Davinio’s work as something resembling the imagination without wires and the Words in Freedom, the second phase of the Italian Futurism (from 1909 to 1914), because she retrieves this technique and applies it in the digital realization of her videopoems, net poetry, in the structure of Karenina.it» (Jorge Luiz Antonio about Davinio's video and net-art) In Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, Fermenti, Rome 2012"

"«This collection of poems by Caterina Davinio […] rewards the reader with fascinating lines and jarring phrases that bring fresh and dangerous enjoyment to the practice. Be alert, all who enter here» (David W. Seaman about Serial Phenomenologies)In Caterina Davinio, Fenomenologie seriali / Serial Phenomenologies, Campanotto, Pasian di Prato (UD) 2010"

"«Nevertheless it is about themes endowed with depth, rather uncomfortable in a culture that often seeks from poetry almost a consolation or at least a reconciliation with the world. Davinio’s poetry is instead problematic, not at all conciliatory or reconciled. Caterina develops her themes in a vibrant language, dry and almost essential, taut and antirhetorical» (Gianmario Lucini)In Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, Fermenti, Rome 2012"

"Only our voices and gray strips of palm like shining backs of coleoptera, atrocious and suffering under the infinite sun; …"

"«Sharp poetry, essential, cutting, between irony and tragedy, with lightning flashes of desperation and piety, of memory and anguish. It has a painful and lost grandeur» (Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti)In Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, Fermenti, Rome 2012"

"«It is the poetry of Rimbaud removed from the soot of the history of literature» (Paolo Mantioni about Il libro dell'oppio / The Book of Opium)In Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, Fermenti, Rome 2012"

"The head tumbles between the legs like a wooden ball you fall, dark night in the eyes, the door a span away inaccessible you are on your knees ..."

"Destiny was superb it spoke among mountains and gray cumuli like castles in the sky, swollen with heat, with rain, with harvests, with infinite richness. …"

"I am ashamed of the polished words, so I hide them throwing rough and crude notes like the Rondanini Pietà still raw with matter on the lines of crystal like the soul that sparkles in one’s eyes. ..."

"«She is able to oscillate between classical allusions to the holy books and the works of great poets like Hölderlin, Baudelaire, Borges, Artaud and Celan, and then she comes to terms with the Beat Generation, with Ferlinghetti, Corso, with the philosophy of the existentialists. With immediate acceptances, repulses, with vast ignitions and immense fires, with echoes of jazz and pop music» (Dante Maffia about Fatti deprecabili/Deprecable Facts) rhizome.org"