Paolo Borsellino

"At least, I said, if he has to be eliminated, the public must know about it, must be aware of it. The anti-Mafia pool must die in front of everyone, it must not die in silence."

"It must be [...] attributed to yet another recognition of Giuliano's investigative skills if what has only now emerged, following complex and exhausting preliminary investigations, had been accurately intuited and framed by him several years earlier. Without wishing to criticize anyone, it must be acknowledged that if other state bodies had adequately understood and supported Giuliano's intelligent investigative efforts, the organizational structures of the mafia would probably not have become so powerful and many brutal murders, including that of Giuliano himself, would not have been committed."

"It is beautiful to die for what you believe in; those who are afraid die every day, those who are not afraid die only once."

"I accept, I have always accepted more than the risk [...] the consequences of the work I do, the place where I do it and, I would say, even how I do it. I accept it because I chose, at a certain point in my life, to do it and I could say that I knew from the beginning that I had to run these risks. The feeling of being a survivor and of finding myself, as is believed, in extreme danger, is a feeling that cannot be separated from the fact that I still believe deeply in the work I do, I know it is necessary for me to do it, I know it is necessary for many others to do it with me. And I also know that we all have a moral duty to continue doing it without letting ourselves be influenced by the feeling, or even, I would say, the certainty, that all this may cost us dearly."

"The fight against the mafia, the first problem to be solved in our beautiful and unfortunate land, should not have been merely a detached act of repression, but a cultural and moral movement involving everyone, especially the younger generations, who are best suited to immediately appreciate the beauty of the fresh scent of freedom that makes one reject the stench of moral compromise, indifference, contiguity, and therefore complicity."

"It is normal for every person to feel fear, the important thing is that it is accompanied by courage. You must not let fear overwhelm you, otherwise it becomes an obstacle that prevents you from moving forward."

"(About Rocco Chinnici) [...] neither general indifference nor the dangerous and widespread temptation to coexist with the mafia phenomenon—often bordering on collusion—ever discouraged this man, who had, as he once told me, a “religion of work.”"

"I never asked to deal with the Mafia. I got involved by chance. And then I stayed because of a moral issue. People were dying around me."

"I didn't like Palermo, so I learned to love it, because true love means loving what you don't like so that you can change it."

"Talk about the mafia. Talk about it on the radio, on television, in the newspapers. But talk about it."

"Politics and the mafia are two powers that live off controlling the same territory: either they wage war against each other or they come to an agreement."

"If young people deny it their consent, even the all-powerful and mysterious mafia will vanish like a nightmare."

"Giovanni, I have prepared the speech to be given in church after your death: "There are many dickheads: dickheads who dream of emptying the Mediterranean with a bucket... those who dream of melting the polar ice caps with a match... but today, ladies and gentlemen, before you, in this expensive mahogany coffin, lies the biggest dickhead of them all... A man who dreamed of nothing less than defeating the mafia by enforcing the law.""

"[...] judges will continue to work and overexpose themselves and, in some cases, end up like Rosario Livatino [murdered by the Mafia] like so many others, politicians will appear at funerals proclaiming unity of purpose to solve this problem, and after a few months we will be back to square one."

"My father loved to use a manual razor to shave rather than an electric razor because that way he was forced to look at himself in the mirror every morning. Looking at his own face every day, if ever there was a need, helped him convince himself that certain things just couldn't be done."

"I remember perfectly well that on Saturday, July 18, 1992, I went for a walk with my husband along the Carini seafront, without being followed by our bodyguards. Paolo told me that it would not be the Mafia that would kill him, whom he was not afraid of, but that it would be his colleagues and others who would allow this to happen. At that moment, he was both discouraged and certain of what he was telling me."

"Lirio Abbate, Peter Gomez, I complici: Tutti gli uomini di Bernardo Provenzano da Corleone al Parlamento, Fazi Editore, Roma, 2007. ISBN 9788881127863"

"Beppe Grillo, Santi laici: Storie di uomini e donne che hanno dato la vita per salvare la nostra democrazia, Rizzoli, Milano, 2011. ISBN 978-88-17-05255-9"

"Umberto Lucentini, Agnese, Lucia, Manfredi and Fiammetta Borsellino, Paolo Borsellino. Il valore di una vita, Mondadori, Milano, 1994, p. 12. ISBN 9788804379089"