All Quotes

"While you need to have determination, you need to have belief in God. It’s only God that gives things. When you believe in that and you work for it, you can get it."

"...you need to take care of yourself and you need to be sure you are sharpened to do the work you do."

"Firstly, before you can have love for the country or do anything, you need to build your own self, you need to trust yourself try to be different, create value… and get noticed.” advice to youth on personal development and contributing to society."

"AI is the future, but the future is arriving faster than we expect we don’t want just to be a participant in AI, but we want to be an active shaper of the AI.” on Nigeria’s and Africa’s proactive engagement with AI."

"Technology makes our lives better, but people make technology better.” on the central role of human capital in digital transformation."

"We just didn't understand that they [the Islamists] were not just anti-Western but on a different plane altogether and this is still not widely understood in the UK... We can be as nice as pie to them but that's not the issue. They are on a mission that has taken them outside anything we can say, a mission to destroy completely our way of life... Because they think it's 'just a few extremists,' they are continuing to track the threat of big spectacular attacks, looking for example at transfers of materials for bombs, whereas what they should be looking at is what's going on inside people's heads."

"“I really commend the UNICEF for their partnership with UNN. We appreciate their support immensely.They have always partnered with us in several areas and their partnerships to us have been very productive and rewarding. We highly appreciate them."

"“In UNN, we do all we can to make sure that our environment is clean and green at all times."

"“If there is flooding here, you cannot teach and students will not be here, nobody will be here,”"

"[About Angelo Scandurra ] With his language, this poet skins things alive. Imagination does not deal with current affairs but knocks imperiously on the doors of the universe. The image of an enormous spider grows before our eyes. The spider with which Spinoza plays, throwing flies at it and laughing, evokes in the philosopher the image of the ‘orto divinus’, whose insistent geometricity is the implacability of a God without passions. Like an enormous mass looming over terrified beings. In our poet, the spider is a ‘grumpy and cunning god’. The overbearing image, however, is not satisfied. The theme looms behind the courtesies of a man of the world. The poet is always vigilant. Whether with sharp lashes or caresses, he takes us from behind. As in an ambush in which we risk our prudent tranquility. Old sensations stir from afar, worn-out emotions are reawakened, and in the end we encounter ourselves."

"And so he became a writer. Well done. Every now and then he will come back for holidays, perhaps to see his family, and he will criticize us fiercely because he lives in civilization. But there is one thing he does not know, that this land, like the Ionia of Heraclitus and Anaxagoras, is magical, and always calls back those who belong to it, as if exercising a right. The law of belonging. And even for him, one day the return will be inevitable. It will be the climate, the light, the air... An almond granita!"

"The mafia itself does not bring anything to mind. Like the homeland, the dead of Solferino. Ancient things. [...] Sciascia was a civil writer, a schoolteacher who wanted to teach us good social manners. But revisiting him today is like rereading Silvio Pellico. His function has been exhausted. We no longer need Sciascia. We need a new reflection, another Sicilian consciousness."

"Where the insular element dominates, it is impossible to save oneself. Every island waits impatiently to sink. A theory of the island is marked by this certainty. An island can always disappear. A talactic entity, it is supported by the waves, by the unstable. The metaphor of the ship applies to every island: shipwreck looms over it. The insular feeling is a dark impulse towards extinction. The anguish of being on an island as a way of life reveals the impossibility of escaping it as a primordial feeling. The desire to disappear is the esoteric essence of Sicily. Since every Sicilian would not have wanted to be born, he lives like someone who would not want to live: history passes him by with its hateful noises, but behind the tumult of appearances lies a profound quiet. Every story is vanity of vanities. The presence of catastrophe in the Sicilian soul is expressed in its vegetal ideals, in its historical taedium, a kind of nirvana. Sicily exists only as an aesthetic phenomenon. Only in the happy moment of art is this island real."

"Hegel called it spirit, we call it culture. Culture is a negative definition, a jumble of things, made for the most varied purposes, not to provide us with a concept of spirit. Ernst Cassirer wrote “For a Philosophy of Culture,” but it was a masked, reduced, debased philosophy of spirit."

"It bothers me when people speak ill of Sicily, but they speak ill of it because their judgment is not based on fact, it is poorly motivated, it is rather something unrequited, a resentment."

"I am not an intellectual, I am a cleric. An intellectual is someone who takes sides with extremely political values. A cleric, on the other hand, is someone who strives to follow values that are universal."

"[About the relationship with Sicily] As far as I am aware—and I can only answer for this, not for so-called unconscious things, which I do not presume to investigate—I have no “relationships,” it is rather the extension of my skin [...] I have written something about Sicily. But as for living here, I must say that I feel at home, I have an immediate connection. As a boy, I lived in Lentini, where I was born—there were no gardens to replace the small boarding houses—my father was a pharmacist, my uncle was a lawyer and owned some land in the countryside, where we would go from time to time. It was a very rich land, where archaeological finds were later made, and so I found myself playing with bones — those of the Greeks, the Graeculi, of all those who had lived there or had passed through (you can find this in one of my short poems...); well, I felt at home, I feel at home there."

"That there is nothing worse than the world does not need to be proven."

"Pessimistic discourse belongs to the genre of oratory, because it presupposes an audience that can shout and get excited."

"The best is nothing more than reality as it is. This was Hegel's pessimism."

"The art of philosophizing comes to light thanks to the mimetic behavior of those who practice it."

"Men are so unjust that to be unhappy is to be wrong."

"A great name without merit is like an epitaph on a coffin."

"Would you know how to give? Put yourself in the place of him who receives."

"The human race experienced on a grand scale what we experience on a small scale, namely the struggle between spirit and flesh, reason and passion. God made us one, but sin divided us, and since then there have been two men within us, Cain and Abel, the first carnal and the second spiritual, one earthly and the other heavenly, one of man and the other of God. (vol. I, p. 98)"

"The Brahmins, these much-vaunted philosophers, willingly call themselves the [gods] of the earth, and to justify that title, they attribute this genealogy to themselves; now they descend from those seven Richis or penitents who were saved from the flood together with Manou, and who, because of their extreme holiness, were transported to heaven and are the seven stars of the Great Bear; Now, and this is the most popular fable, when Brahma wanted to create men, he drew the Brahmins from his head; the Kchatrias or warriors from his shoulders; the Vaishyas or merchants from his belly; and the Shudras or artisans from his feet. These are the four castes established and consecrated by the philosophers of India as the foundation of the religious and political constitution. (vol. I, p. 707)"

"[...] the Brahmins are the Pharisees of India, because of their affectation in their way of life, their scrupulousness about external stains, their constant use of ablutions and bathing, their zeal, their attention to detail, the same negligence of what is most essential, the same pride, the same ostentation, and the same hypocrisy. Nor are there any who literally practice what the Savior says, that is, who drink through a strainer for fear of swallowing an insect, while swallowing a camel, that is, trampling on justice, humanity, and mercy. (vol. I, p. 708)"

"Believe in yourself, even when no one else does. That is the true mark of a pioneer."

"Far below the lowest caste and well below the sudras, a quarter of the Indian population languishes in servitude, disgrace, and misery, under the name of parias. Eating with these unfortunate people, or touching food prepared by them, or even drinking water drawn by them; using earthenware vessels they have held in their hands; setting foot in their dwellings or allowing them to enter one's own, are, in the eyes of philosophers, crimes that exclude an Indian from his caste. (vol. I, p. 708)"

"Epicurus may therefore turn and twist as he likes, deny Providence, deny the punishments and rewards of another life; make justice, friendship, and every other virtue serve pleasure; reduce the human intellect to combinations of atoms, and aspire, as the highest of goods, to the condition of the beast, which always finds itself in the same place, alone against all, alone in all places, against all times and against all men or the whole human race, which never ceases to proclaim a rewarding and avenging God, the immortality of the soul and the eternal distinction between good and evil, and thus condemns the Epicurean system as equally false and shameful. (vol. I, p. 774)"

"According to the false prophet of Mecca, everything happens out of inevitable necessity; there is no free will in man: God works all actions in us, both good and bad; so that he punishes the wicked for the sins that he himself has wrought in them. To those who cried out against such blasphemy, Muhammad gave only one answer: This is a mystery, a secret. Yes, the mystery of Satan, the author of all evil, who wants to place all blame on God himself, the author of all good. Now, the same mystery of impiety is revealed in Lutheranism. According to the false prophet of Wittenberg, as according to the false prophet of Mecca, everything happens to man out of inevitable necessity, and there is no free will in us. God works in us both evil and good; and he will punish us not only for the evil we could not avoid, but also for the good we did as best we could. In this, Luther greatly surpasses Muhammad in impiety, for Muhammad never said that God would punish us for the same good, and that good works were as many sins."

"It is the merit of those who praise that makes the value of the commendation."

"To envy anybody is to confess ourselves his inferior."

"To love is to make a compact with sorrow."

"In love, great pleasures come very near great sorrows."

"Benevolence rejuvenates the heart, exercise, the memory, and remembrance, life."

"Calumny spreads like an oil-spot: we endeavor to cleanse it, but the mark remains."

"A woman would be in despair if nature had formed her as fashion makes her appear."

"In a tête-à-tête we are never more interrupted than when we say nothing."

"That Iran has been systematically erased, replaced by an Islamic Republic of death and destruction"

"We are left with graveyards... The world must act with the urgency this moment demands."

"You tried to kill me, but you couldn’t… I live with survivor's guilt because many Iranians do not have the same protection"

"Your struggle is not in vain. This moment is yours. This time will be remembered as the turning point, when the Iranian people took their future back into their hands... Light will prevail over darkness."

"My courageous compatriots, Your presence in the streets across Iran has kindled the flame of a national revolution... Do not abandon the streets"

"Several thousand were killed... Trump's hands are stained with the blood of Iranians"

"The recent sedition was like a coup d'état — of course, the coup was suppressed."

"Now do we say that the nature of the Word became flesh by undergoing change, nor that it was transformed into an entire man of soul and body; rather do we say that the Word, in a manner indescribable and incomprehensible, personally (hypostatically) united to Himself flesh animated by a rational soul, and thus became Man and was called the Son of Man..."

"Anathema 1. If anyone does not confess that the Emmanuel is in truth God, and that the Holy Virgin is, in consequence, Theotokos (Mother of God), since she brought forth according to the flesh the Word of God who has become flesh, let him be anathema."

"Fragments of the schisms came to mind, passages from the heresies that had divided the Western and Eastern Churches for centuries. Here Nestorius contested the title of Mother of God given to the Virgin, since, in the mystery of the Incarnation, she had carried a human creature in her womb and not God."

"Nestorius, a follower of the Antiochian school where he had been trained, argued that in order to preserve the integrity of Christ's humanity, the divine person of the Word cohabited with the person of the man Jesus, with the consequence that in Christ, according to him, there are two natures and two persons, and Mary can only be called the mother of Christ and not the mother of God."