All Quotes

"Do judiciary trials take too long? Because there are too many of them; if there were fewer, they would take less time."

"The progressives will destroy us, and they will do so more cunningly than those on the center-right: without being noticed, without shouting, and this time without even encountering obstacles from the other side. Everyone will agree when it comes to disarming us."

"The problem is not so much that there are 200,000 lawyers, but that there are 15,000 more every year. And since they practice law for 40 years on average, 15,000 times 40 equals 600,000 lawyers. I don't believe that this country's gross national product can support six hundred thousand lawyers, but I'm under no illusion that a ruling class that has failed to get the better of the weak taxi drivers' lobby will be able to get the better of the much more powerful lawyers' lobby."

"In Italy, it pays to be a criminal."

"In Italy, it pays to break the law because the law protects those who break it much more than those who suffer from its violations."

"In the past, I was criticized for telling a delegation of French magistrates that with Mani Pulite we selected the most corrupt, like lions that prey on the slowest gazelles, like antibiotics that create antibiotic-resistant strains. That's how it went. If you stop the treatment halfway through, these are the results. And unfortunately, we had to stop the treatment halfway through."

"I envy university professors: they are paid to ask questions to people who know nothing and who do everything they can to say something, while I question people who know everything and do everything they can to say nothing at all."

"I certainly don't want to be remembered as the president of the ANM who abdicated the defense of the independence of the judiciary. Mr. Minister, I hope you don't want to be remembered as the one who tried to violate it."

"In my opinion, Italy's mistake was to always say, “Let's wait for the verdicts.” No, we're not waiting for the verdicts. [...] If I invite my neighbor to dinner and I see him leaving my house with my silverware in his pockets, I am not obliged to wait for the Supreme Court's ruling before inviting him to dinner; I stop inviting him to dinner immediately."

"Italy had so many appeals to the European Court of Human Rights against the unreasonable length of trials that the European Court, which had said that a trial should be considered unreasonable if it took more than two and a half years from the start to the first instance ruling, had to raise this assessment to three years because it could no longer manage to deliver judgments in two and a half years due to being overwhelmed by appeals from Italy. This explains why they get angry with us."

"The difference between a citizen and a subject is this: a citizen has few obligations and few prohibitions imposed on them, and if they respect these, they are a free person; a subject is a person on whom millions of obligations and prohibitions are imposed, the violation of which is usually tolerated, but if they raise their head, they are given a list of all the violations they have committed up to that point."

"Well, white people already had that. So, what do they gain out of this? Black people are free to shop. But what do the white people get [that they didn't already have]"

"The modern Western state is based on the principle of the separation of powers. The separation of powers makes sense if the disagreements between the powers are physiological, because if they always agreed, there would be no need for the separation of powers. A little bit like the rights of freedom. The rights of freedom were granted in order to be able to speak ill of those in power, because there were already courtiers to speak well of them."

"But why does the Milan railway link cost twice as much as the one in Zurich and, after twenty years, still not be finished? [...] And why, after the arrests, were the subsequent contracts awarded at a 40% discount compared to before? They said it cost more because the water table was high... It seems that arrests lower the water table!"

"No one is put in prison to make them talk; they are put out if they talk, which is a different thing. But who would ever give money to someone who, once arrested, lists all those who gave it to them? Or who would ever take money from someone who, when arrested, lists all those they paid? They become unsuitable for committing those crimes: they are no longer dangerous."

"When there is less money circulating in people's pockets, citizens are more easily outraged."

"When Cuccia, president of Mediobanca, was interviewed by journalists after testifying as a person informed of the facts at the Ravenna Public Prosecutor's Office, he replied to a journalist's question about whether Ferruzzi Finanziaria's financial statements were false: “I have never seen one that wasn't.”"

"Once I was trying to explain amnesty to a group of Californian judges who were asking us why alternative procedures did not work in our country. They understood complex issues, but when we explained that amnesty is a law that forgives everyone, they were convinced that we were joking. You see, Carl Schmitt argued that all concepts of modern European public law are secularized theological concepts. The secularization of plenary indulgence gives rise to amnesty, pardon, and various forms of remission. With one difference: the Church demands repentance, the state does not."

"My colleagues and I tore away the veil of hypocrisy. And that made things worse."

"After Mario Chiesa's arrest, Craxi said that not a single PSI leader in Milan had been convicted with a final sentence, except for the “mariuolo” (thief). No one burst out laughing. The veil of hypocrisy still held."

"[“And now?”] They haven’t stopped stealing; they’ve stopped being ashamed. They brazenly claim what they used to do in secret. They say things like, “We do what we want with our money.” But it’s not their money; it’s the taxpayers’."

"[Regarding the system of contracts negotiated between parties and companies] There are no innocents; there are only guilty parties who have not yet been discovered."

"Forlani made a fool of himself at the Enimont trial. Evidence was found against Craxi, and he was convicted. We did not find evidence against others. The Italian Communist Party was financed by cooperatives in a declared and therefore legitimate manner. But in Milan, where they participated in the distribution of bribes, we put several communist leaders on trial."

"Italy is the European country with the lowest number of prisoners in relation to its population. And it is the country of the Mafia, the 'Ndrangheta, the Camorra, the Sacra Corona, and widespread corruption. Of course we need new prisons. With borders now disappearing, countries with stronger criminal repression export crime; those with weaker criminal repression import it."

"Once in San Vittore, I met a Chilean pickpocket. He had been arrested four times in a month. He greeted me with a smile: “What a beautiful country, Italy!” He had previously been arrested in Ottawa and had spent two years in prison."

"In my opinion, magistrates should never be involved in politics. This is because they are chosen on the basis of competence, and having guarantees, they are not used to following the criterion of representation. This is why magistrates are often terrible politicians."

"I have been really focused on this idea that I’m coming from a line of people who started this work, and I have to continue"

"I’m really glad to be a part of that because I think that I represent so many — I hate to say it — marginalized identities: I am African American. I am a woman. I am a queer person. I am disabled. I’ve got a lot of these things going on that inform my daily life"

"So any opportunity I have to be a part of a forum (to) engage people to celebrate and to amplify diverse voices and to hold on — in the face of all these attacks on (diversity, equity and inclusion), things like that — to the very simple idea that diversity makes us better, that’s always a good thing"

"I noticed that students are more receptive to videos than they are to assigned readings and things like that. And so I’m trying to negotiate, ‘How do we make that happen?’ How do I let them know that this is still an ongoing thing: That 100 years ago, we were still talking about issues of racial discrimination, sexist discrimination. That this is not a new thing? … So, trying to bridge those gaps is a little bit difficult. And I think that there is a lot of apathy"

"I, as an older person need to be like, ‘All right, I’ll work with you on this.’ I’ve tried to pass this torch, you know, and be supportive, but we can’t just point fingers at them and be like, ‘Oh, they’re lazy. They don’t want to do anything"

"The people who tend to call themselves allies are usually the people with privilege, who will not have a mutual benefit from whatever they're trying to help with"

"This really makes sense because what we're doing is conspiring to shut down entire systems of oppression"

"We are challenging that system and so we have to conspire. We have to plot and plan the ways in which we can tear those systems down"

"The last thing I'm interested in is someone who is slapping a label on themselve as a way to be recognized as a good person"

"There’s a privilege to being able to go to school and see someone standing at the front that looks like you. It’s not until you get the teacher who looks like you, who’s teaching a class on African American studies. That changed my life. I said, ‘What is this? I did not know any of this!’ It was the first time that I felt like I was learning something about where I came from that was not revolving around being subservient to someone else or less than someone else"

"I read “The Education of The Negro Prior To 1861” and I understood what Carter G. Woodson was talking about. The pain that I felt that it took me becoming an adult to first learn these things was traumatizing to me. And all I could think to myself was, ‘What about everyone else? They’re not studying themselves. What will they become?’ And that’s where we get stuck in a lot of things"

"What our ancestors and elders have been trying to do is make things better for each generation. But we equate better with proximity to whiteness and we have to stop doing that… Sometimes the consequence is a separation from cultural traditions and affinity… But cultural memory is strong. Even when you are displaced or removed or separated from each other, that memory is there"

"We are all the same people. Understand that the boat just went to different places. We originated in the same spots. We are all the same"

"No one wants to hear that we might be in a psychological state that weakens us or renders us unable to serve them; we must be strong at all times and no one wants to hear otherwise"

"But when Black women sing, we seem to be given permission to perform pain for others to consume. People demand that Black women singers emote suffering and go so far as to call it their “best” music"

"Happiness and joy don’t sell as well as suffering and crawling our ways up seemingly insurmountable hills. No, people are incredibly entertained by Black women’s suffering to the point of wishing ill upon us to see what the output will be"

"I think it's time that people who really do believe in the sanctity of human life ... should look for people that are not just talking the talk when it's election time."

"For six years they did nothing to end abortion on demand or overturn Roe v. Wade."

"Well I thought about my formula. Hard work, a little bit of luck, a little bit of talent and a lot of help from my friends, students and professors."

"For me, it was all right. There were very few bumps along the way. I think it helps that you work very hard and you enjoy it. Yeah. That is my advice to young people. First of all, you need to find something that really you love and then do everything you can to preserve that. There’s no easy road to be creative, I think."

"A really strong woman accepts the war she went through and is ennobles by her scars."

"Have no fear of perfection; you'll never reach it."

"I had three brothers and a sister, who died at about six weeks of age. I was the elder sister and I used my age to my maximum advantage. But I also was expected to, because as I got older and my mom worked, she needed me to help out. I had to boss my brothers sometimes because I was left in charge. For example, during high school, I was in complete charge of the household during one summer."

"I live in Los Angeles, in the Eagle Rock neighborhood, for people who are familiar with Los Angeles. I was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma in 1933. My birthday is October 9th. In a couple of days, I’ll be 88 years of age."