Non Fiction Authors From Italy

"A teacher does not train; they educate and elevate."

"I see a great desire for conformity around me. Young people have breathed this air and tend to reproduce what adults have been developing for some years now: an antagonism towards anything that smacks of risk. And the bad thing is that many young people are likely to apply this to their life plans."

"Good ideas in education cost nothing, except the courage to have them and want to implement them."

"Music, as Maestro Claudio Abbado said, is not important for children to become musicians, but to teach them to listen and, consequently, to be listened to."

"In the United States, no economic magnate has ever left this world without first naming a foundation, university, museum, or theater after himself. Here, multimillionaires rush to hide their money in some tax haven to keep it available for their children (who will thus grow up to be boors and multimillionaires)."

"The first and most immediate response that a parent tends to give when faced with an episode of obvious intemperance on the part of their child is to defend them, contravening the most basic rule of educational common sense."

"Believing in oneself means having faith in others, and therefore in the possibility of relationships, love, help, and solidarity."

"As long as there is thought, there is dignity, and as long as there is the courage to be concerned, there is freedom."

"Mediocrity annihilates, flattens, makes everyone the same. Imagination and dreams highlight our inner resources, that is, our very secret of living."

"The word “[work] flexibility” has become synonymous with “exploitation.” The laws that created it have been used by public and private managers to have thousands of young workers at their disposal at low cost, who can be blackmailed on a daily basis simply by waving the specter of termination of their employment contract."

"I wonder: is it possible that no entrepreneur has ever reflected on the simple fact that temporary work produces a temporary identity, which is the opposite of the idea of a profession based on passion and merit, which is the only guarantee of quality performance and high productivity?"

"It is not television or the Internet that causes discomfort to children and adolescents, but rather a certain unwillingness on the part of adults to be there for them."

"Excessive protection prevents maturation, thus also blocking emotional development and happiness."

"[...] what the crisis teaches us is that now more than ever we need to go back to thinking, planning, and experimenting."

"Many of us thought, or deluded ourselves, that certain words, certain achievements, could be forever, imperishable, carved by our fathers on the stone of our most glorious history. One of these, the most important, we even took for granted: freedom."

"Every ideology or religious faith should be oriented toward the attainment of happiness, because it is the only way to allow for the hope that tomorrow will be better than today, and not just the same. Then there would not be so many followers and faithful ready to sacrifice themselves in the trenches of the “just cause”; churches would remain deserted and politics would be only an exercise in good government that would not make anyone's fortune. (p. 49)"

"When art is purely an aesthetic exercise, it is boring and mediocre. Art, representing the human condition, must be disturbing."

"Happiness lies in the courage to challenge oneself, to demand something from one's destiny without letting it run its course without our contribution. (p. 66)"

"Those all-black clothes smack of defeat, they reek of collective mourning."

"The idea of limits—and its intrinsic, unfortunately persuasive, pedagogical force—was created to control people, to force them to grow up within a fence, to live in mortification: it constitutes the pedagogical path to frustration, a progressive annihilation of expectations and the most basic existential ambitions."

"The courage to educate, which is so greatly needed, lies precisely in the ability to take away, not to add."

"Sex and sexuality have been tools through which man has sought happiness. Since common morality has allowed us to engage in sex without love, the belief has spread that it represents a piece of Eden within everyone's reach. In reality, the frantic search for pleasure at all costs has taken something away from the knowledge of our identity, precisely through the trivialization of eroticism, now reduced to free genital exercise. This has led to the erosion of a complex idea of human eros, which should not only not be flattened to the necessity of reproduction, but also not simplified and reduced to a mere meeting of cells, a banal hormonal issue. This is also because genital happiness is among the most ephemeral and leads to premature melancholy. (pp. 79-80)"

"Each of us has the right to think that life is a long road, where you can and must try, make mistakes, and try again."

"Friendship arises from life's opportunities, often from fate, but to become an indispensable feeling, it needs to be based on shared emotions, not emotional mediocrity."

"The task of a psychiatrist is to accompany growth, to accompany pain and not erase it; if anything, they must try to ensure that the damage is not repeated, that it does not sprout a weed that infests one's entire existence."

"A young talent, however innovative and creative they may be, if they remain isolated, even if connected to the world in a virtual way, will never be able to express themselves as those who have daily opportunities for real contamination."

"I am afraid of the life my daughter will have. I can count young people who are great travelers on the fingers of one hand. No one cares that you went to Peru: they're much more interested in someone who takes a selfie with a heart-shaped pout. Today, artistic expression has been reduced to zero, unless you consider dipping a biscuit in your latte to be art, perhaps tagging the bakery so you can get free cappuccinos for the next three months."

"At the beginning of my career, I was too drastic and perhaps I didn't understand that there's an age for everything. I can afford to do certain things today because I see them from a higher hill, which allows me to broaden my view of things and bring a little more wisdom to bear. I am sometimes criticized for my excesses, my hyperactivity, and I think that criticism is fair, even if in the end it has brought good things, because otherwise I would be just one of many today. And then they accuse me of being blunt, of often taking too clear-cut positions: that too must come with life. I was born to have opinions, but at a certain age, you reach a point where you can speak your mind."

"Rudeness in the age of the Internet and technology seems to know no bounds: everything seems to be permitted, respect for others is now an obsolete concept, a habit of old gentlemen resting in some country cemetery."

"Parents need only ask themselves one simple question: if a boy or girl has never wanted for anything, how will they know the need to build something for their own future?"

"Seduction begins with a mole, or rather a difference, something that distinguishes uniqueness. The actresses who have left an indelible mark on our memory are those who had some small flaw: feminine (and masculine) perfection leaves no impression and causes no disturbance; it may work for a photograph or an advertisement, but not for the construction of a myth."

"And if tomorrow our children can finally live in a world where a computer can be absolutely competitive with human intelligence, what will be their task and their destiny? To control megacomputers or be controlled by them?"

"All children have talent, as Maria Montessori said, but not all are creative in the same way. To nurture their creativity, we need to make them confident in their abilities and not dependent on anything: a very difficult task for any educator."

"Digital technology is, and must remain, a tool, not an end in itself. With regard to the anthropological changes it constantly proposes, we need to speak words of wisdom and assert common sense. Technocrats are citizens like everyone else, not emperors of the new world."

"Friendliness applied to teaching has a relaxing effect on teachers, as it makes them feel magically irresponsible: authority is tiring and must be constantly reaffirmed, while this decadent form of equality requires no effort."

"Hold your head high and don't set limits on your ambition: limits are there to be overcome through passion and ability. It's not true that you have to accept yourself in life; rather, it's essential to know that you can improve yourself, whatever season you're going through."

"It is love that acts like a disease, but it works in reverse: it is good when it infects, it kills when it heals."

"New technologies bring with them new responsibilities for adults."

"Every magnificent man has a weakness that makes him precious."

"Thinking up and broadcasting a program means contributing to the construction of the culture and language of the younger generations, so television cannot exempt itself from playing a primary role in education."

"I have always thought that a nursery school works well when a child arrives in the morning clean and returns home in the afternoon dirty: it means that an emotion has passed through him that may have the taste of flour, the color of a marker, the shape of a magnificent plasticine sculpture."

"Indignation is a fierce picklock, a lethal weapon precisely because it arises from oppositional thinking, from special consideration, from an analytical evaluation of what one intends to criticize. It is not a bazooka, but a sharp and astonishing foil. It takes courage to be indignant."

"The idea that happiness is a ‘'ready-to-wear’' feeling, easy to find, generates a very low threshold of antibodies against boredom, induces emotional satiety, and this entails, in the medium term, an enormous risk for young people: emotional emptiness, sensory detachment from reality, the absolute denial of desire and passion. (p. 15)"

"Being free has a cost, but not being free costs even more. Being happy is demanding, but not being happy requires even more effort. (p. 42)"

"The most contradictory aspect of sex-centric culture is that it coexists with rationality, invokes it. The highest meaning of eroticism lies instead in the courage to detach oneself from one's surroundings, to abstract oneself, to elevate oneself to something else. Courage, a fundamental characteristic of ecstasy, lies in trusting oneself and one's senses, in letting go of all stubborn certainties. Happiness can only be found in unawareness and in the ecstasy that represents it supremely. (pp. 82-83)"

"You should learn that life, like love, is the only business whose balance sheet must end in the red: you have to give everything without calculating what you get in return."

"True travelers are not rich people but curious ones. They are not looking for comfort, but for novelty and surprises."

"My profession has taught me that the most difficult and improbable thing is to change. Yet the pursuit of happiness lies not in preserving, but in the courage to change the course of events."

"Loneliness sometimes has unexpected, surprising colors and nuances. It is an empty room where your soul and your sensitivity resonate."

"On the other hand, I have always thought that the profession of teacher is not and should not be a job for just anyone: a civilized community should know this."