All Quotes

""He is my inspiration. Kip’s work on the LIGO – not LEGO, mind you – the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (I checked Wikipedia!), changed how we understand the universe. But what truly fascinated me was how he bridged science and storytelling. He consulted on Interstellar, turning theoretical physics into cinematic art. That taught me something profound – science doesn’t have to live in isolation. It can inspire, educate and even entertain. I realised my place could be right there – where science and pageantry speak the same language of wonder.”"

"Q:: What do you think is responsible for the increasing rate of suicide in Nigeria?"

"A:: I think suicide comes from hopelessness, and hopelessness is not something that happens in one day. It’s something that starts from cluelessness from not knowing what to do, from feeling helpless; from feeling constrained; then to the point you feel there is no point living."

"Q::What is Vantage Forum?"

"A::VANTAGE Forum is an annual entrepreneurship development initiative by The Elevation Church aimed at helping individuals excel in their businesses and careers through seminars, workshops, and mentorship programmes."

"Q::What other social initiatives has The Elevation Church championed?"

"A::We put service to God and humanity at the fore of our mission and we engage in several initiatives that benefit both members of our congregation and the un-churched community at large. Our interventions include a specialised ministry we call ‘Elevate 200.’ Elevate 200 is a special outreach church focused on empowering the less privileged in our communities through financial, medical, welfare and education interventions."

"“The Interpol chief, Meng Hongwei, wanted to take me back to China,” said [World Uyghur Congress] President Dolkun Isa, “[and] since he wasn’t able to do so, he went to the cell [that] was prepared for me [a] long time ago. This is because of the fact that, in China, jail is a place that should not [have a] vacant cell [at] any time.” President Dolkun Isa also said, “From time to time, I wonder: Should I apologize to Meng Hongwei for causing him to go to jail?”"

"Part of awakening is exposing yourself to something new."

"Even if you have a planet named after you, remain down to earth."

"Don't tell me that the sky is the limit when there are foot prints in the moon."

"How close are you to success when you are about to give up."

"When you do what you love, people will love what you do."

"We can't solve the problems of tomorrow by using the solutions of yesterday."

"The fundamental issue is not concussions but repeated blows to the head--with or without concussions, with or without helmets. We must mitigate the exposure of our children's brains to all types of blows to the head."

"Q::Do you have personal plans for technological developments in Nigeria?"

"A::I have a strong desire for development in Nigeria. As we speak I have been talking with several universities in Lagos and Ondo to establish a collaboration that will research a new technology for water purification and advanced nanomaterials for industry. We believe these ideas are immediately suitable to benefit Nigerian society using local capabilities and expertise."

"Q::You made the first silicene transistor this year. Why was that such a milestone?"

"A::Until not long ago, many people thought producing a silicene transistor in practice could not be done because silicene is unstable. However, we discovered that covering it with protective materials can stabilise it. This approach is similar to silicon technology, where silicon’s success is partly due to a protective surface layer of silicon oxide that shields it."

"The individual Severino, still inhabited by the will to power, can succumb to all the weaknesses to which immortals abandon themselves. But the authentic Severino, who like everyone else has always been open to the truth, and is therefore something infinitely greater than God, cannot be afraid of death."

"If we already take for granted what madness is, philosophy becomes completely superfluous."

"The position of Parmenides is unique because it is also the point of greatest contact with the East.[...] Parmenides' radical solution is this: becoming no longer threatens, it cannot be harmful because it does not exist. [...] Everything that is distressing, terrible and horrendous in the world is illusion; this is the meaning of Parmenides' “'doxa”'. Well, this is also the path taken by the East: the “”Vedas“”, the “”Upanishads“”, the Buddhist revival of Brahmanism are all great themes that converge on this point: man is unhappy because he does not know he is happy, because he does not know that pain is outside him, and that he is a pure gaze that is not contaminated by the pain that passes before him, just as the mirror is not contaminated by the image reflected in it."

"Today, the philosophical and scientific cultural climate, not to mention literature, has moved away from the concept of definitive, incontrovertible truth. Today's “truths” serve to transform the world according to certain plans. No one says anymore, as Galileo did, that man knows mathematical truths as God knows them. [...] Greek thought understands the definitive truth of things as an oscillation between non-being, being and non-being. If the things of the world, according to the belief of humanity today, did not and will not exist, it is inevitable that no definitive truth exists."

"[...] if we “start” from a belief in the existence of “history” (as the history of freedom), all the immutable, eternal, gods, fixed and rigid structures that have appeared and reappeared throughout Western history are constraints that suffocate humanity: in this sense, certainly, the history of the West is a history of progressive liberation from the immutable. This movement of emancipation is analogous to the liberation of servants from their masters, to refer to the famous figure of Hegel“s ”'Phenomenology of Spirit'“: the 'immutables” here are the masters, and becoming is the movement of liberation through which the servants rise up against their masters. In this story, however, both servants and masters are in agreement and solidarity “in essence”: they both have faith in the existence of history (in the existence of becoming) and in the existence of forces capable of “making history”, capable of creating and destroying the things of the world. Instead, we need to think of a dimension different from that in which the great “masters” and great “servants” of our culture are placed: a different dimension, in which we become aware of the extreme folly of the original faith that animates the entire history of the West. When we become aware of this madness, a sense of the “eternal” emerges, which is completely different from that for which the “masters” of our culture are “eternal”. If one has faith in the existence of creation and annihilation, then the “masters” and “gods” rise up; but when one sees the madness of that faith, then, with the “servants”, all the “masters” decline. The “eternal” is no longer the master, but the “heart” of things."

"The whole of Western civilisation says: “Things are not nothing”. But the West adds: “However, they become”. This attitude is based on faith in becoming, the fundamental faith of our civilisation, which, while “opposing” things to nothingness, also “identifies” them with nothingness; since to think that they, in becoming, come out of nothingness and return to it means to think that they are nothing. From the beginning, Western culture has had an ontological meaning. It has this even when it is unaware of it. But it is ontology that identifies being with nothingness. This identification is the very essence of Madness. Non-Madness is the appearance of the eternity of all things. The becoming of the world is not the creation and annihilation of being, but the story of the appearance and disappearance of the eternal. Precisely for this reason, we (and everything) are “eternal and mortal”: because the eternal enters and exits from appearance. Death is the absence of the eternal."

"Cornelio Fabro essentially drew on Thomas Aquinas, while someone like Bontadini was first and foremost a Gentilean."

"It can be said that the only thing denied to the people of the “paradise of technology” is the truth of paradise. A paradise without truth can be a deception. The suspicion that it is so makes it a hell."

"But Bruno's agreement with Parmenides is also agreement with Heraclitus, for whom, Bruno recalls, all things are One. Just as episteme is about to abandon its faith in the immediate ability of thought to grasp the deepest meaning of truth, that faith finds one of its most powerful and grandiose expressions in Bruno's philosophy."

"As the destiny of necessity, truth is the appearance of the being of the being as such (i.e. of every being); that is, the appearance of its not being other than itself, i.e. of the impossibility of its becoming other than itself, i.e. of its eternal being. The appearance of the being is the appearance of the totality of the entities that appear [...] The parts are a multiplicity. The appearance of a part is the relation of transcendental appearance to a part of this totality [...] This means that there is a multiplicity of these relations. In this sense, not only is the content that appears manifold, but so is its appearance."

"Since the USSR no longer controls the grassroots movements against global wealth and Islam has taken their place, the survival of the rich world is in danger."

"It is completely misleading to condemn the “West” and capitalism for dominating and exploiting the rest of the world. Peoples have no morals. Have you ever seen one sacrifice itself for another? When they have power, they impose themselves on the weaker ones, just as nature fills the void."

"The civilisation of technology is what I call “the most rigorous form of extreme madness”. Even more quietly: extreme madness is believing in the ephemeral, temporal, contingent, random nature of man and reality: it is the conviction that everything comes from nothing and returns to it. However, the supreme defence against the anguish aroused by this conviction – the defence that in tradition is ultimately constituted by God – has become technology. Everywhere, technology is becoming the most radical form of salvation, which today has supplanted any other form of remedy against death."

"Technology tends to enter into symbiosis with the last two hundred years of philosophical thought, which pushes towards the light its terrible spirit of destruction of the past, showing that the past can no longer have the right to oppose the process that removes it. Truly powerful and successful technology is closely linked to the wise, philosophical, terrible and destructive message of the “death of God”. “If God is dead, then everything is permitted,” said Fyodor Dostoevsky. But this is not the case: if God is dead, there is no chaos, because power establishes a hierarchy in which the weaker powers are subordinate to the stronger ones. In other words, we are moving towards a time when the greatest power, the technical-philosophical one, is subordinating all other forms of power from the past (including the power of Islam) to itself, hierarchising them."

"Why is it that today, when not only philosophical but also scientific culture rejects the idea of a stable state of being, of stable knowledge... why is it that in this situation there is someone who proposes the absolutely stable, the Absolutely Existing? The elimination of all definitive knowledge stems from the way in which Greek philosophy took its first steps. Destiny calls those first steps into question. So, by questioning them, the claim to take a look at the Absolutely stable becomes less paradoxical."

"Do you know what continence is, Wally? No? Every time I take a piss, I pull back, I hold my urine in, and I count to ten Mississippi."

"When there is a conflictual situation – Christianity versus democracy and capitalism; yesterday, capitalism versus communism – fuelled not only by words but also by deeds, with the greatest form of power available, namely technology guided by modern science, then an inexorable mechanism is set in motion. This is the mechanism whereby every force has an interest in ensuring that the instrument it uses to achieve its specific goals functions optimally; so that when that force moves in this direction, in which it has every interest in ensuring that its own purpose prevails – let us call it “ideological” without giving this word a negative meaning – and therefore to make its instrument function optimally, then a decisive reversal occurs – or at least a strong tendency towards reversal – whereby the instrument with which it attempts to achieve its goal becomes so indispensable that it itself becomes the goal of those forces, which therefore become something instrumental. [...] If this is the mechanism, whereby the forces that use technology tend to attach such importance to the tool they use that it actually becomes the goal, gradually renouncing more or less decisive parts of their original goal, then we can imagine a process in which it will no longer be the West – capitalism, communism, Islam – that will use technology, but technology that will use the West; a process that will also involve social aggregates such as Islam or China."

"When [...] the Church condemns divorce, abortion, euthanasia, labour exploitation, profit as the primary goal of economic activity, the annihilation of man in a totalitarian state (and so on, up to the refusal to consider unstable unions and, even more so, homosexual couples as “families”), the Church condemns something that, for it, is not only a denial of the supernatural truth of Christianity, but also a denial of those “natural truths” that every human being, even non-believers, can know and practise."

"But, one might ask, what about science? Is science faith?! Yes. In order to have power over the world, science has long since renounced being “truth” in the sense attributed to this word by philosophical tradition. Science has become hypothetical knowledge. It knows that it is not absolute knowledge (“truth”, in fact) – and in this sense it is not faith but doubt –; however, in order to have power over the world, it must have faith in its own ability to transform it; and it is within this faith that it elaborates, resolves or confirms its doubts."

"This Pope, as a good shepherd, is trying to change things. But I would not want us to lose sight of the fact that the underlying “corruption” is the “evasion” of the world from the past of the West. I would like to say that the process in which the structures of the past are falling apart is like a fever: if you didn't have it, you couldn't recover. We are moving towards a world governed by technological rationality; and it is likely that Italy, precisely because it has had the problems we have mentioned, will be ahead of other, less feverish nations."

"Whether we should rely on science or religion or some other form of wisdom or experience cannot be determined by science, religion or anything else. Answering this type of question has always been the task of philosophy. Those who would like to set it aside should remember that getting rid of it is and always has been a form of philosophy. And again: are we really sure that there is such an irreconcilable opposition between “spirituality” and “technology” and that, beneath their opposition, they do not have a common soul?"

"The being to which Heidegger [...] reasonably thinks, is [...] that which differs from all determinations, differs from entities and is precisely [...] this difference [...] – it is the central figure of Heidegger's discourse – which Heidegger calls ontological difference [...] inasmuch as being is the appearance of entities, inasmuch as it differs from entities, it is non-entity, and Heidegger explicitly says it is nothingness; being is nichts, but when he introduces this nothingness, he intends to introduce precisely that which is in no way an entity, but not that which – and here Heidegger is quite explicit – is constituted as nihil negativum, that is, nihil absolutum. I have expressed my opinion on the relationship between Heidegger and nihil absolutum several times, saying that it is strange how Heidegger treats the concept of nihil absolutum with arrogance and rarely asks himself [...] what the historical derivation of this concept is. He is particularly keen to emphasise that being [...], das Sein, Being is not entity and in this sense is nothing, but not nihil absolutum. Now, when Heidegger speaks of entity, he explicitly characterises it as not nihil absolutum: the tree, the wall, the house are not absolute nothingness. [...] once with Gadamer [...] precisely on the subject [...] of the ontological difference, I tried to show him the necessity that above the ontological difference between being and entity, there was a more original plane of the entity that includes what Heidegger calls entity and what Heidegger calls Being. And the observation I made to him was this: but if it is being, nichts, if being is nothing, being that is nothing in the sense indicated is not a nihil absolutum and if, in turn, entity is not a nihil absolutum, then the two that constitute the ontological difference, however radically different, agree in their not being a nihil absolutum, so that then the trait of not being a nihil absolutm unites [...] the radically different; if this step is taken, then we see that [...] the traditional concept of being as a common feature of the totality of differences, properly thought out, is capable of encompassing within itself that ontological difference which, for Heidegger, should radically and definitively lead [...] outside the classical concept of being as koinón [...], as the commonality of differences; therefore, koinón lies [...] in not being an absolute nothing on the part of Sein [Being] and on the part of Seiendes [Entity].."

"In the past, the thesis that this conversation is eternal sometimes provoked a few chuckles, but then I realised that it was worth remembering that Einstein's relativity, although with a logic very different from mine, says that future and past events are no less real than present ones. So much so that when Popper spoke with Einstein, he called him Parmenides. Interviewer: The English physicist Julian Barbour asserts that time does not exist and that events are like postcards hanging on a clothesline, all present at the same time... Severino: Yes, he slightly varied the image that Popper used with Einstein of frames wrapped in a reel. But neither of them can explain the camera or the movement of the gaze that passes from one postcard to another. To do so requires a logic [...] that science cannot provide. In general, science believes that the mind is a special thing among things. This is where the theory of experience, which scientists tend to neglect, comes into play. Experience is the transcendental mind; it does not enter or exit a field of vision but is the place where everything enters and exits. To understand what the unwinding of the frames or the gaze that flows over the postcards is, we need to introduce the concept of transcendental consciousness, which was glimpsed in some way by idealism, that is, the place within which the eternal occurs. The so-called becoming of the world cannot be the beginning of being and the cessation of being, but is the appearing and disappearing of the eternal in that transcendental consciousness."

"It is believed that there is opposition between Islam and Christianity, but they are on the same side. Their enemy - as the Pope has pointed out - is the destruction of Western tradition. This is the real clash of civilisations, which is not between the two religions, which share a relationship with the God of the philosophers – the Greeks – and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."

"I am the first to recognise this. When I began to develop this way of thinking – but let's go back a long way – I was the first to realise that I should leave that university. Interviewer: However, you never broke off your personal relationship or esteem for your teacher, Gustavo Bontadini? Emanuele Severino: We loved each other, and I still get emotional when I think about it. I remember when he was in his last days... ah, what a dear man... I went to see him in Via Stradella – he lived in Via Stradella, near Corso Buenos Aires – and I said to him: “Maestro, I am Emanuele Severino”. He, who had not opened his eyes for days, gave a start and opened his arms to me. We embraced for a long time. Then he let go of my arms and I left him."

"Interviewer: Do you watch football matches? Severino: I'm not a fan, but I'm passionate about the World Cup. And fencing, do you know why? My father was a fencing master and led his military team to victory before the First World War. It was the only sport I was any good at; until recently, I could have disembowelled someone. Interviewer: How should life be taken, with kisses or slaps? Severino: Giving me my wife was a big kiss, taking her away from me was a big slap. Interviewer: One last question: what is love? Severino: Ah, love is still a form of will, but it always leaves you dissatisfied: so ending a programme with this phrase leaves a slightly bitter taste in the mouth."

"Interviewer: The piano as a percussion instrument. Are we right in thinking that your point of reference was Stravinsky? Severino: Yes, I was steeped in Stravinsky's phonics and formulas, but perhaps above all in Bartók's. Interviewer: But who introduced you to music? Severino: My brother, who was eight years older than me, was an excellent pianist. I loved listening to him, and then, when I could, I would sit down at the piano myself and “compose”. Ever since I was a boy, I have always been attracted to the world of sounds, to the combination of sound relationships. Maestro Guastalli, my brother's teacher, who disapproved of my way of playing and urged me to study regularly, but I stubbornly preferred to combine sounds. To tell the truth, in later years I did study with a certain regularity, but not always continuously. So I remained a modest pianist."

"Interviewer: Can you explain, in the simplest way possible, what your philosophy consists of? Severino: We are kings who believe ourselves to be beggars. I question not only Christianity, but the whole of Western civilisation and its philosophy, according to which we come from nothing and end up in nothing. This is the essence of nihilism. No, each of us is a god with the conviction of being contingency, the shadow of a dream. Man is a poor thing: Pindar says so, Shakespeare and Leopardi say so, it is the climate created by Bertolt Brecht. In reality, we are the eternal appearance of destiny. Our dead await us as the stars in the sky await the passing of the night and our inability to see them except in the dark. We are destined for a Joy more intense than that promised by the religions and wisdoms of this world. The beggar is our conviction, for example, that I am raving, because real things are this world, Europe, Italy, economic, legal and sexual relationships. Whereas the essence of man consists in his absolute permanence. With death, we overcome the state of beggary: death allows us to transcend the sense of nothingness."

"Even for atheists, things come from nothing and return to nothing: God's friend is a madman who believes he needs a master, a lord, a creator; the atheist is a madman who believes he does not need one, but both belong to the same soul."

"The most rigorous form of madness today is technology: we are living in a time of transition from tradition to this new god. Authentic globalisation is not economic, it is technological. We make the mistake of believing that capitalism and technology are the same thing: no, they have different purposes. Capitalism aims at the infinite increase of private profit, technology at the infinite increase of the ability to achieve goals, or power. Technology will kill democracy, starting with the weakest states such as Italy. This process will then also affect the US, Russia and China. At some point, the United States will prevail, but not as a nation, rather as the primary managers of technological power. We are now struggling to understand this because we are in an intermediate period. We are like a trapeze artist who has let go of one piece of equipment (tradition) and has not yet grabbed hold of the other (technology, the new god). We are suspended in mid-air and feel lost."

"Hemingway had learned that the pleasure of life is inseparable from pain: life is a struggle – it is “war”, said the ancient Heraclitus."