Businesspeople From Italy

"“I don’t much like how she is portrayed. I love the normal woman. With her capacities, skills and professionalism that can and must emerge. One should not focus exclusively on beauty.”"

"“The best way to fight the mafia is knowledge.”"

"“Spreading the culture of quality is the first calling card of public service…”"

"“Public services are needed but must change.”"

"“It must no longer indulge in sensationalism and ‘TV of pain’.”"

"“For Rai there is a risk of Big Brother via Google, YouTube, Facebook.”"

"Strategy isn't something you define once and follow forever. It’s like a white line on the road: you keep adjusting."

"Imagine an onion. The center is the people. The layer outside is the product. The external layer is the process. The process makes sense when you have a product, and it's only through the motivation of the people that you make a product. This is the way I see the company. And if you see the company this way, you have to start with the people."

"When you change the culture of a company, it's never a revolution. It's an evolution."

"The fathers of the Church forbade the Hindus under terrible penalties the use of their own sacred books, and prevented them from all exercise of their religion. They destroyed their temples, and so harassed and interfered with the people that they abandoned the city in large numbers, refusing to remain any longer in a place where they had no liberty, and were liable to imprisonment, torture and death if they worshipped after their own fashion the gods of their fathers."

"Often, the word utopia is the most convenient way to justify what one has not the will, ability, or courage to do. A dream seems like a dream until one begins to work on it. Only then does it become something infinitely bigger. (Italian: Spesso il termine utopia è la maniera più comoda per liquidare quello che non si ha voglia, capacità o coraggio di fare. Un sogno sembra un sogno fino a quando non si comincia a lavorarci. E allora può diventare qualcosa di infinitamente più grande.)"

"A dream seems like a dream until you start working on it. And then it can become something infinitely greater. (Italian: Un sogno sembra un sogno fino a quando non si comincia a lavorarci. E allora può diventare qualcosa di infinitamente più grande.)"

"I am extravagant, but always with a particular piece: perhaps the shoes or the glasses… As the famous Italian actor Vittorio Gassman said: “You can just have one extravagant piece, more is not classy.”"

"All big projects, every time, they come when you are forced to do something when you are in the corner. Otherwise, if you need to take a decision, you will never take it."

"Angelo Galasso is a sustainable brand because we don’t use any kind of mass production. All our garments are made exclusively in Italy and in small artisanal workshops. We do extensive background checks to ensure these workshops respect health and safety standards. We also operate a ‘zero-waste policy, we only buy fabrics based on the actual meters we need to maximize efficient production and minimize waste."

"Among musicians, I had a true friend, Maestro Cantelli. He was a young man of particularly noble sentiments."

"Competition among Ferrari drivers was always encouraged. The Ingegnere- he hated being called Commendatore- especially relished chargers in the red cars. Recrimination was always on the cards for a man who settled for a safe second, never for one who had destroyed a car trying to be first."

"Il secondo è il primo dei perdenti. (The runner-up is the first of losers.)"

"I had deluded myself - as fathers often do - that our attentions would help [Dino] to regain his health. I had convinced myself that [Dino] was like one of my cars, and so I made a table of the calorific values of the various food he had to eat - types of food that would not harm his kidneys - and I kept an up-to-date daily record of his albumins, of the specific gravity of his urine, the level of urea in his blood, of his diuresis, etc., so I would have an indication of the process of the disease. The sad truth was quite different: my son was gradually wasting away with progressive muscular dystrophy. He was dying of that terrible disease which no one has ever been able to understand or cure, and against which there is no defense, aside from genetic prophylaxis (i.e. a medication or a treatment designed and used to prevent a disease from occurring)."

"Now, finally, the news is confirmed, the rumors fact. Enzo Ferrari died the evening of August 14, and while that may be trite, it is also true that an era ushers away with him. He was the first, and also the last, of the great autocrats of auto racing. Red cars will continue to be built in the little town near Modena, but other hands, perhaps susceptible to influences beyond a pure love of racing cars, will be in control. For that Ferrari undoubtedly had. Thirty and 40 years ago he began producing road cars, disliking intensely that the majority were ordered by rich dilettantes, people attracted by the kudos of the name, probable incapable of driving a Ferrari properly. There was no Fiat money there in those days, and the road cars were seen as an evil necessary to pay for the racing program. It was an attitude that persisted to the end of the old man's life."

"They are cars which the sporting client can use on the road during the week and race on Sundays."

"My heart has always beat a little faster for Ferraris, and there is no distinction in that. Captivation by them is almost irresistible. All that charisma, magic, call it what you will, has plundered the emotions of racing fans as no other cars ever have, or ever will. Paint a race car red, and already you are halfway there. But the rest is less easy to pin down, a hodgepodge of remembered sights and sounds; black on yellow Prancing Horse sheilds on the cockpits of Ascari, Hawthorn, Lauda, Berger; exposed gear lever gates, "PROVA MO" stencil marks. And the mystique, of course, began with the enigma from whom the cars took their name. A man of contradictions, on occasion chillingly ruthless, yet capable of surprising sentimentality."

"His death has deprived us of a great champion - one that I loved very much. My past is scarred with grief; parents, brother, son. My life is full of sad memories. I look back and see the faces of my loved ones, and among them I see him."

"One day in Modena I was entering a restaurant when I recognized Ferrari sitting at one of the tables. As I passed I tried to greet him, but he turned his head away and pretended to be talking to the person next to him. He was ignoring me! I used to have contact with Adolfo and Omer Orsi of Maserati, Renzo Rivolta of ISO, even Alejandro de Tomaso. But Ferrari never spoke to me again. He was a great man, I admit, but it was so very easy to upset him."

"Still, the lure of Ferrari was always very real. "When I first went there," Stefan Johansson said, "and saw Mr. Ferrari, I was as nervous as if I'd been meeting royalty. Even if I don't get the drive, I thought at least one of my dreams has been fulfilled." He had that effect on people, this immaculately dressed old man with the ever-present sunglasses. At Ferrari press conferences, we always felt like schoolboys again, waiting for Morning Assembly, and it saddens me deeply to realize we shall not do it again. Racing people across the world will be feeling as I do, now that the greatest of their gods is gone."

"Ferrari's love of his cars was an abstract thing. For the actual machinery there was no sentiment whatsoever. Millionaires across the world may devote themselves to collecting Ferraris, but the Old Man hadn't a sliver of interest in what he saw as museum pieces. The future was the thing, and the cars were routinely broken up once their useful purpose had been served. The classic shark-nose cars dominated the 1961 season, for example, but not a single example survives. At any given time, however, his passion for the current cars was the major force in his life."

"Wealth is a wonderful ticket to freedom."

"Intelligent men are not ashamed to bring out their feminine side."

"In Rome they dress very well. In Milan, they dress more bourgeoisly. But the most avant-garde city... is Naples. The Neapolitan underground youth can easily be compared to a city like London."

"All the mistakes I did in my life, I like to keep them private."

"I am what they call a throttle man. You must not be scared of going too fast."

"In fact, I knew Princess Caroline by eye for two years [before March 1984.] We had mutual friends and I met her at various times during evening parties. Nothing more. At the end of the month of June, we both understood that we wanted to see each other every day, [and] we were invited by mutual friends for a cruise in Corsica, and at the end of this cruise we spent ten days together in Sardinia alone and we returned to Monte Carlo where we never left each other."

"Stefano was a humble guy. He would always step back when the rest of them were having their picture taken. He never forced himself into that world."

"He had confessed that he was a little superstitious, but it was to calm down with the number 3, and "the multiple numbers of 3, 6, 9, 12." He died on October 3, after six years of marriage, the year of his thirty years! He had three children, and the ring he had offered to Caroline had three sapphires, one yellow, a green and a blue!"

"I believe that there are three things in life that you must absolutely do yourself because nobody can do it in your place: keeping fit, following a diet, and accumulating culture."

"...every human being has an amount of genius in them."

"I used to always get up at 5 A.M., but now I force myself to stay in bed until 6."

"If you have 1,000 people, you have 1,000 geniuses. They’re just different kinds of genius and a different degree of intensity."

"But with a phone call I can understand your mood, your emotions. With an email I can’t. When speaking I can understand if you have a problem in an instant. I understand your fear. But I can begin to cultivate a hope with you."

"I have 5,000 books in my home, 1,000 of which I feel are close to my heart. They have always shown me the way. Books are my great passion; I could not live without them."

"Man needs dignity even more than he needs bread."

"We must start from the joy of life, from respect, from humanity, because the most important thing in life is having respect for other people. Especially for those who might think very differently from you."

"Dignity generates responsibility, responsibility generates creativity."

"If you are a dickhead you will still be a dickhead after tertiary education."

"There is nothing more beautiful than a beautiful woman."

"Doing things without giving the impression of suffering is a question of good manners."

"I started with nothing and built something, and one day it will finish, and something new will come out of it."

"...there is no accessible luxury. There is no aspirational luxury. It’s either luxury or not luxury."

"Everything is on loan in life—everything."

"I even believe aesthetics are like ethics. Something that is beautiful is ethical, and unethical things aren’t beautiful."