Politicians From Italy

"Today Flora is going through the countryside; | Come, sacred Pan, to do her honor, | What else so beautiful have you not seen yet. | Nor do you take this into disdain or pain, | Vaga Syringa, who gives her the pride The nine Muses, the three Graces, and the Hours. But you, horned God, if you aim a little | I stare at her, to new wonder | Your bagpipe will fall away. (from Elegy – Flora in the countryside, p. 4)"

"Enjoy therefore the soul's beauty for yourself | Of your Muses, those alone are mine | Who have a happy soul in a double flame accustomed. | Now receive some on the mountain, where it is collected Your name, among other clear spirits; | Yes, whoever is happy or saddened by love May my sayings still be dear to me at times. (from Elegia – Two beauties, Cintia and Flora, also light it up. TO SENATOR RENATO TRIULZIO OF MILAN, p. 4)"

"Amor sees me, and with him Cintia and Flora, | This one on the right hand, and the one on the left side | There've other Tuscan foot not pressed yet, | Behind the tallest and most ornate of all | He sang for Delia, and to whom she wrote her name, | Now the second time he will be praised. Let them show me the path I am taking, and how Callimachus and Philetas showed it to them, | First to have this idra adorned their hair. (from Elegia – 2 beauties, Cintia and Flora, also light it up. TO SENATOR RENATO TRIULZIO OF MILAN, p. 2)"

"If I could tell it in rhyme to others | The sweet sight you gave me, Love, | On the blessed day when the heart | Ice cream and cold you warmed me in first place; | Perhaps such is the person who falsely estimates | All your kingdom is only tears and pain, | Which for me freed from the common error | Of his life would put you at the top . (from Sonnet – He would hope for comfort from the verses, p. 1)"

"[...] stepmother sometimes, sometimes mother | the light of day comes into human works. [...]. (VI, 97; p. 310)"

"[...] the little brings much greater fruit | when there is good worship, that 'much incult [...]. (IV, 427; p. 265)"

"He who wants to embrace too much, squeezes nothing. (IV, 422; p. 265)"

"The harsh necessity, the custom and the time | giving birth day by day to cunning and art [...]. (III, 863; p. 223)"

"[...] nor is there anything more like God | who against the offender show themselves pious. (from Girone il cortese, google.it/books?id=d6WjRUQtH2AC&pg=PA77 77])"

"Things banned increase the desire. (from Flora)"

"Il green pass è una patente, è una patente di libertà, che è nelle mani di chi è guarito dal covid o ha fatto i tamponi o, ancor meglio, ha fatto il vaccino. (...) se non hai la patente non puoi, non potrai lavorare, non potrai accedere ai luoghi di socializzazione."

"(...) aumentare agli opportunisti il costo della non vaccinazione; come glielo aumenti agli opportunisti, qual è la logica, devo dire geniale del green pass? Tu dici "o ti vaccini", no non mi vaccino – benissimo, "o guarisci", e va be' se non lo ha preso... "e allora ti fai i tamponi". I tamponi sono un costo psichico – il fatto di infilare dentro al naso, fino al cervello, i cotton fioc lunghi – è un costo psichico, e un costo monetario - 50 euro, due volte 60 euro - più il costo organizzativo! Tu gli aumenti il costo; aumentandogli il costo, tu lo spingi a ridurre lo zoccolo (...)"

"It is not possible to fully understand modern world culture without appreciating its connection and its continuity with the heritage of classical culture."

"Si vous demandez à tout mathématicien si dans son esprit il fait une distinction les théories de l'élasticité et celles de l'électrodynamique, il vous dira qu'il n'en fait pas, car les types de équations différentielles qu'il rencontre, et les méthodes qu'il doit employer pour résoudre les problèmes qui se présentent, sont tout à les mêmes dans le deux cas. (If you ask any mathematician if in his mind he makes a distinction between the theories of elasticity and those of electrodynamics, he will tell you that he does not, because the types of differential equations he encounters, and the methods which he must employ to solve the problems which arise, are all the same in the two cases.)"

"He and Benedetto Croce actively attacked the regime from their seats in the Senate. After 1930 Volterra was dismissed from the University and stripped of his membership in all Italian scientific societies. The same thing later happened to Levi-Civita. To the honor of the Santa Sede, he and Volterra (both of whom were Jews) were soon thereafter appointed by Pope Pius XI to his Pontifical Academy."

"On my way home in May 1932, when I stopped in Rome to see Vito Volterra and explained my 92 Andre Weil formula to him, he jumped up out of his chair and ran to the back of the apartment, crying to his wife: "Virginia! Virginia! Il signor Weil ha dimostrato un gran bel teorema!" ("Mr. Weil has proved a very beautiful theorem!")"

"I did not hesitate at the Congress of Mathematicians at Paris to call the nineteenth century the century of the theory of functions, as the eighteenth century might have been called that of infinitesimal calculus."

"I choose to change things from within. That is probably more difficult, it is longer and more complicated but it is a more concrete solution. To work from within to change monetary, financial, agricultural, commercial, industrial policies. We are growing, and we are allying with other European countries to change the E.U. from within. If we leave, it would be the end of hope."

"We had prepared a plan in recent days (to deal with COVID-19), because it was clear what has happened could somehow happen."

"Nel mondo reale il pericolo principale non è rappresentato dalle forze della natura, ma [...] dalla violenza dell'attuale globalizzazione neoliberista. Anzi la natura stessa è vittima di questo processo se è vero, come ricorda il biologo Edward O. Wilson, che le specie stanno scomparendo con una velocità di tre all'ora."

"(About the law on the so-called “short trial”) Should be defined as: the law of the short death of trials. It is right to ensure speedy trials, but here we have a trial that remains long and only sets a maximum time limit that can never be met. We need a reform of the justice system that shortens the timeframes but gives the judiciary human and operational resources and funding. There are 30 percent shortages in the public prosecutor's offices in Palermo and Catania, cuts in funding for overtime for staff and court clerks. Hearings are only held in the morning. At full speed, the timeframes would be halved."

"For some time now, the Constitution has been under attack in some fundamental areas. The autonomy and independence of the judiciary has been under constant siege for years, as has the principle of equality. Article 3 of the Constitution, thanks in part to an upright judiciary, has not remained an abstract principle. All the most recent bills, however, aim to create a two-tiered justice system: efficient and harsh with the weak, soft and sluggish with the powerful. A justice system that ensures impunity for the powerful."

"(About the takeover of the ‘Why Not’ investigation) De Magistris calls it illegitimate, I call it unthinkable. [...] My feeling is that we found ourselves in a situation where autonomy and independence, both internal and external, reached a breaking point. We are truly in a moment of crisis for the rule of law."

"As far as we have been able to ascertain, De Magistris' investigation went far beyond what has become widely known. It went well beyond the wiretapping of Clemente Mastella or the inclusion of Romano Prodi in the register of suspects. I believe that the core of the investigation was precisely the intertwining of criminal powers and other powers in the area. I believe that his case cannot be addressed without taking into account the reality in which De Magistris, often in institutional isolation, operated."

"The union between occult powers and the mafia is the famous “big game” that Giovanni Falcone was working on. And for which he probably died: and the real instigators of the Capaci bombing have never been found."

"I would define the case De Magistris as emblematic of what happens when a magistrate finds himself isolated and overexposed, managing an extremely complex and delicate investigation into a tangle of legal and illegal interests involving diverse individuals and circles, on the cusp where criminal, political, and institutional spheres meet. As often happens in areas where integrated criminal systems operate. And I am referring, of course, to the criminal systems associated with the mafia in Sicily and the 'ndrangheta in Calabria."

"Borsellino once, we were at his house in Marsala one evening, so before he even arrived in Palermo, I remember it clearly even though he didn't give me any precise explanations about it, he said to me, and I quote: "w:it:Pietro Giammanco is a man of Lima," a statement that obviously upset me."

"(About Pietro Grasso) He was a magistrate of great experience, courage, and professional ability, but it must be remembered that he became national anti-Mafia prosecutor thanks to a law passed ad personam by Silvio Berlusconi, which excluded Gian Carlo Caselli, who had more qualifications than Pietro Grasso. Grasso himself said in a famous interview that the Berlusconi government deserved a special award for its anti-Mafia activities. Pietro Grasso is certainly not left-wing, nor has he ever been in his brief forays into politics. Even when Caselli was appointed prosecutor of Palermo in 1992, Grasso was his opponent, the candidate of the then Minister of Justice Martelli. Therefore, he did not have a left-wing position, as the founders of Liberi e Uguali do. He was then supported by the Berlusconi government against Caselli. [...] Grasso has always taken a very cautious stance on many of the Palermo prosecutor's initiatives. He did not want to sign the Palermo prosecutor's appeal against the acquittal of Andreotti in the first instance. When he was my boss, he was very lukewarm about the investigations I had carried out into criminal networks, the State-Mafia negotiations, and the Dell'Utri trial. He has always been a prudent man, legitimately so, but also a cautious magistrate."

"As a people, we have been stripped of monetary sovereignty, but not only monetary sovereignty. We have been stripped of financial sovereignty, we have been stripped of political sovereignty. We are subjects, we are not sovereign in our own country. [...] And this lack of sovereignty, this expropriation of sovereignty, is not an accident, it is not a coincidence. It is part of a precise plan, which is not only Italian [...]. I believe that it is a rearguard battle to say, “We want another Europe, we will build another Europe”: within these institutions and within this Europe, another Europe is impossible. We must tear down this Europe, as it is today, as it is constructed, with its institutions and the primacy of finance over politics that has been established. [...] We must withdraw from the European treaties."

"(About the ideal government) I am a candidate for Prime Minister, so I will be the president of the Council and also take on the role of interim Minister of Justice. Travaglio would be an excellent choice for the Ministry of Information, as he is outside the political sphere, while I would put Fiorella Mannoia in charge of Culture. Then I would put the economist w:it:Vladimiro Giacché in charge of the Economy, a worker in charge of Labor, and a police officer in charge of the Interior. We need competent people, not like Castelli, who was an engineer, and Carfagna, let's not even go there..."

"Today we have a more civilized mafia and a more mafia-like society. A mafia that increasingly wears suits and ties and a society that changes its clothes too many times a day and chooses to disguise itself. In short, we have entire sections of society that have now internalized the behavioral models of mafiosi. And you can see it in all areas."

"Azione Civile è un movimento civico puro, fuori dai partiti, che oggi avvia una campagna di adesione aperta ai cittadini che credono in questo progetto per radicarsi sul territorio."

"Un magistrato deve essere imparziale quando esercita le sue funzioni ma io confesso che non mi sento del tutto imparziale. Anzi, mi sento partigiano, sono un partigiano della Costituzione."

"I saw that it was this that tormented him the most: the attraction that fascism exercised upon the extreme left. He had been a teacher with Mussolini in a little Italian village, he knew him well and even while hating him liked him a little."

"Long live Mussolini! Long live socialism!"

"Stalin will never make socialism; rather Mussolini will."

"Mussolini is clever, demagogic, devoid of scruples, and he has learned a great deal from the Russian Revolution."

"Fascism has made grandiose Social Revolution, Mussolini and Lenin, Soviet and Fascist corporate state, Rome and Moscow. Several stands already taken had to be rectified, we have nothing of which to ask pardon for as both in present and past we are impelled by the same ideal: the triumph of work."

"Il ragazzo morto non era uno dei nostri, era un black block."

"Gualtieri is just a mere political enforcer of the will of banks and big finance. Direct expression of the economic powers that supported his appointment, he is the representative of the most hostile elements to the workers, their interests and their aspirations."

"Berlinguer was an honest person, but that's not enough to be a communist."

"Yet, alongside Western weaknesses, there were also serious problems for the Soviet system, while the American position was less bleak, in both absolute and relative terms, than the successive electoral defeats of presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in presidential elections in 1976 and 1980 might suggest. Moreover, the failure of the Communists to benefit substantially from the changes in Portugal, Spain and Greece was matched by Communist weakness elsewhere in Western Europe. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, French President from 1974 to 1981, and Helmut Schmidt, German Chancellor from 1974 to 1982, combined to act as a very strong stabilising force and to relaunch the EEC project. Within the Socialist International, the so-called Socialist Triangle of Willy Brandt, Olof Palme, Swedish Prime Minister, and Bruno Kreisky, Austrian Chancellor, was dominant. In Italy, the Communist Party, the most powerful in Western Europe, adopted a ‘Euro-Communism’ that was opposed to Soviet direction. Enrico Berlinguer, who became Party Secretary in 1973, a key figure, was committed to the existing democratic system and pursued what was termed the ‘historic compromise’ with the established Christian Democrat-dominated political system. A pact was negotiated in 1976, with the Communist Party agreeing not to try to overthrow the Christian Democratic government. Euro-Communism was a term coined in 1975 by Western European Communist leaders keen to demonstrate their democratic credentials. More generally in Western Europe, the declining position of heavy industries was a challenge to the trade unions that were central to left-wing political parties, and notably to the Communists."

"Kodra: Quasi un simbolo generazionale."

"They're building armoured skyscrapers in New York, every flat costs 100 billions euros. We're going towards a new middle-age: there'll be fortresses with rich chinese, russians, indians, arabians, americans inside, while the rest of the world will live in a new dark age."

"We know that our struggle is not easy, that it will still be long and hard because the big capital is determined to betray the fatherland and to commit all kind of crimes just to save its privileges; yet we know that the path showed us by Stalin is the right one and that following this path we'll be able to conquer victory."

"In the name of Stalin we always won, in the name of Stalin all victories will be ours."

"Gualtieri is just a mere political enforcer of the will of banks and big finance. Direct expression of the economic powers that supported his appointment, he is the representative of the most hostile elements to the workers, their interests and their aspirations."

"Fascism is used by the bourgeoisie when the latter consider itself no longer able to fight off the peril of a socialist revolution. Fascism is, therefore, organic to the logics of capitalism and represents a more authoritarian handling that bosses temporary use, when necessary, in order to maintain their rule."

"Greta is built in a laboratory! She has the proper face, the proper pigtails, the proper illness, she is properly little... She and all her family settled down forever, but it is evident that they are used. After two days she shook hands with miss Christine Lagarde, who leads the IMF. She is pure laboratory creation."

"They told us that after 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and 1991, with the hauling down of the red flag from the Kremlin, the "end of history" had come, that capitalism had won and that it was the only possible path to follow. We have seen in this 20 years that it isn't so."