Television Presenters

"(About the COVID-19 pandemic) It has become clear that those who do not pay taxes are not only committing a crime but also a felony: if there are not enough beds and ventilators, it is also their fault."

"Since words have enormous power on television, I think they should always be used with respect for the person you are addressing and for those who are listening to you. ‘Do-goodism’ is a stupid definition, in the sense that it is a stupid ‘simplification’, which I dispute. What is the opposite of buonismo, being mean and cynical? To get what, a headline in the next day's newspaper? To build your career by hurting someone else? We are full of self-proclaimed opinion makers who make a career out of talking badly about others. In life, you can be famous either because you build something or because you destroy something."

"Political interference has never been so strong on public television. I am talking about company management, advertising limits, and salaries. There is no company in the world that can survive in the market with someone from outside dictating rules and setting limits."

"‘Want to come up for a drink?’ ‘No, come on, let's fuck here.’"

"I am sure that we should not be elitist. But the idea that because those who are in power now are not doing a good job, they can be replaced by anyone else because they are all the same, is a dangerous idea for the construction of a society. The idea that money is seen as a symbol of sin, that any step away from poverty or simplicity is a step away from purity, is a very dangerous idea."

"But he's a total piece of shit! Everyone says he's nice, but it's not true! I completely disagree: he's the most cynical man I know."

"To be allowed on television, you have to belong to the new television species created during the Berlusconi years, but which is still in vogue. The figure of the paraculo, yes, write it down, the one who never takes sides, who blends in, who makes indifference his banner. [...] Names and surnames, as I do in show business. Bonolis, who claims to feel neither right nor left, Fabio Volo, who boasts of being a indifferent, Simona Ventura, who defines herself as equidistant, candidly adding that she worked at Mediaset while being pursued by rumours that she was Galliani's lover and that she let him believe it. [...] Gene Gnocchi, Fiorello, Fabio Fazio, Baudo himself. [...] They are the heroes of TV opportunism, the ones with the glossy masks. They work on the condition that they don't rock the boat, not realising that opportunism is a form of corruption."

"Zucchero is very fortunate: he writes and sings well. He entertains people, but what I find truly extraordinary is his enthusiasm. Zucchero is the only one who lets you hear an album before he releases it. This gives it meaning and makes us realise that this is the work of an artist. Now that he has achieved fame and international recognition, he continues to put himself out there in the most authentic way, not inventing things to impress, but rediscovering and searching for what he wants to say about himself and his roots. This is truly rare. If you think about it, there is not much difference between Zucchero's songs and the photographs in which he is portrayed with his grandmother. It is as if, unconsciously, he is trying to tell the story of that photograph through his profession."

"Rodotà has always been committed to the affirmation of rights for all. And rights are the foundation of every action and thought."

"He's boring, his guests are boring."

"Minions (film) (dubbing into Italian)"

"What will happen after Expo [2015]? Maroni and Pisapia had both talked about campuses, but there is still nothing on the horizon. If everything has to be planned to optimise costs, then let's decide now! Also because tomorrow it will all be dismantled. The mistake is that everything obviously had to be designed with an awareness and understanding of what should come next."

"Today's television wants to do everything except tell the truth. It is television of the plausible, not of the real. And our programme with Roberto Saviano, Vieni via con me, aims to be an act of truth, a testimony of love. It is not a political programme, nor is it investigative journalism. It is a story of today's Italy."

"Fabio, in my opinion, is incredibly well-prepared. I am constantly amazed by his ability to change: he switches from cinema to current affairs, from politics to history. He knows musicians and the history of music, and he always has a witty remark at the ready. This is not something that can be improvised. His skill is quite unique in Italy."

"Politics on TV can be very easy, even for politicians, or for politicians who pretend not to be politicians: populist politicians."

"Why do I look pissed off? – begins the young manager, glaring at his audience as he paces up and down the stage at the company convention – I look pissed off because I sense mistrust, I sense expectation, I sense those critical looks you get when you watch a football match and you can't believe what's happening... everyone's an expert, why?"

"Power is not contested, it is conquered."

"With Ballarò, I learned that there will always be someone who will describe what you do in a negative way. They say that video goes to your head. For me, it was a humbling experience."

"What is populism? In politics, it is the tendency of a person to appeal directly to an undefined ‘people’, whom they consider to be the bearers of positive values, in contrast to an undefined ‘elite’ (which we might call ‘the caste’, ‘the powers that be’, ‘the left’, sometimes ‘the right’, often ‘the politicians’, etc.), who are the bearers of negative values. From the populist's point of view, the people are obviously those who agree with their ideas, who applaud them and do not question them. Outside the people, and motivated by pernicious intentions, are those who do not follow the leader's ideas, or who in some way oppose or distort them, or simply doubt them."

"Gino e Michele, Matteo Molinari, Anche le formiche nel loro piccolo s'incazzano. Opera omnia, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milano, 1997. ISBN 88-04-43263-2"

"(Concerning Expo 2015) There is everything, but also the opposite of everything: the world of vegans and carnivores, Israelis extolling genetically modified cherry tomatoes and GMO corn, and Coldiretti explaining and describing the value and importance of being GMO-free."

"It's not that I'm cynical, I'm from Liguria. And Ligurians have a practical sense of things, there's no point pretending..."

"Fazio is the mellifluous leftist. His eyes look like two eggs in a frying pan."

"I have always believed that being on the right means defending opportunities for everyone, while being on the left means working hard to ensure that everyone has more opportunities."

"What is built outside greatly influences what you build inside. [...] If you are in a beautiful place, your mood changes. We have neglected the beautiful things in life. We have built a world where only what can be monetised matters: even space and time."

"Everything that makes life beautiful is considered a luxury: knowledge is a luxury; and beauty is the future of knowledge. This is the only thing that makes things beautiful or ugly: if you know, if you are aware. Globalisation has swept away what has always been a characteristic of human beings: the search for beauty not as pure aestheticism, but on the contrary as self-construction."

"I have interviewed Giovanni Rana no more than three times in my life. But once – in 1998 – for various reasons, I spent a whole day with him and his son Luca in San Giovanni Lupatoto, in the heart of the family's industrial empire. To describe them, this image, which I will never forget, would suffice: Giovanni recalls his early days as an apprentice in the family's artisan pasta factory, while Luca looks on admiringly. Shortly afterwards, he gets up and shows me how the entire company has grown up around their family home: a house-factory, a life physically intertwined with the idea of work."

"(On criticism of possible control by multinationals over Expo 2015) Yes, McDonald's is sponsoring it, but in exactly the same way as it sponsors the stadium."

"We are using symbolic places for economic exploitation or simply because the architect who works on them will be noticed. It is one thing to prevent Pompeii from collapsing, it is quite another to rebuild it and turn it into Disneyland. It is important to understand the passing of time, the marks left by time. It makes sense to preserve, it makes less sense to improve or update; [...]. Things have value if you can see them with today's eyes, discover if they tell you something."

"The line between pop and aesthetic catastrophe is blurred."

"How the Democratic Party could have voted for a motion that equates Nazi-fascism and communism is one of those mysteries of faith that deserve to be explored. The position of the right wing, which has been dreaming of imposing this fanciful equation for half a century, is easy to understand. And one can understand the vote of the poor, the forgetful, those who were not there or who have never opened a book, a few simple-minded fools seeking light or glory. However, the history of the 20th century, like it or not, is different, and it certainly cannot be rewritten by a few small-time revisionists momentarily involved in a school trip to Brussels or Strasbourg."

"There is a two-way relationship between the prime minister and the country. Italy couldn't wait for Berlusconi to come along, and Italy is the way it is because Berlusconi is there."

"I've been with Rai for twenty-seven years. I still have a year left on my contract. I remember the first time I went to Via Teulada: it was a legend becoming reality. I fear that the turning point came when the article was dropped, when ‘Rai’ became simply ‘Rai’: Rai and Mediaset. That was when people started saying ‘the company’, even though they knew that Rai could not, indeed should not, be just a company."

"The absolute lack of trust we have in the words and power of school to solve problems is condemning this country to decline. We have now shifted our focus from what can be given in terms of skills to what can be spent in terms of money: this is causing infinite damage to society, which is becoming permeated with the certainty that money can solve everything."

"He too is red, a cherry red that is unmatched even in the vermilion of Rai Tre. But he loves to play the opposite role. That of the innocent little priest without a parish, friend to all and enemy to none. In reality, in today's Rai, fragmented into sultanates, there is no one more partisan than him. His little hand is wrapped in grey velvet, but inside he hides a poisoned stiletto. It is with this blade that Fazio practises inflexible censorship. [...] Fazio had invited Pietro Ingrao [...]. In a fit of memory loss, the old communist leader claimed that the Italian Communist Party had distanced itself from the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. A complete falsehood, as history teaches us. But Fazio and the invited audience were careful not to object. Not even a murmur, a cough, a sidelong glance. Why? q:it:Edmondo Berselli, a free-thinking intellectual who recently passed away, explained it thus in L'Espresso: ‘Because at that moment, the senescent but not senile apotheosis of an impossible communism, a utopia, a great dream, an assault on heaven, was being celebrated. And so much the worse for the facts, if the facts interrupt the emotions’. Fazio is not interested in the truth. Especially when he paints a picture of Italian history and reality that clashes with his narrow political horizon."

"Giovanni Floris, Mal di merito. L'epidemia di raccomandazioni che paralizza l'Italia, Rizzoli, Milano, 2007. ISBN 978-88-17-01957-6"

"(About Expo 2015)This place is full of non-GMO cultures. Just look at the Coldiretti stand, which is an important supporter and is always full."

"I believe that a distinction must be made between enjoyment and exploitation. I am in complete agreement with the enjoyment of a good: beauty must be accessible and enjoyed by those who are interested in it. In my opinion, exploitation implies betrayal, not because it results in economic gain, but because it transforms that place into something else."

"The truth exists, but we can never know if it is what we are saying."

"Giovanni Floris, La fabbrica degli ignoranti, Rizzoli, Milano, 2008. ISBN 978-88-17-02486-0"

"(On the role of interns) How can you not realise that being here at Expo [2015] right now gives you access to a world of relationships, contacts and cultures that no internship or work experience in the Italian job market can offer?"

"It is difficult to propose a reform of the university system that guarantees results. The idea that competitive examinations ensure excellent professors for all universities certainly does not seem to work. The reality is that if a department wants to hire an incompetent candidate, it will always manage to do so, regardless of the complex rules of public competitions. (p. 163)"

"Are Italian professors in better shape than others? What is the secret to their longevity? After all, being a professor cannot be easy: continuous lectures, updating, theses to supervise, research to coordinate and articles to publish, all without stopping, otherwise the international community will cut you off. It cannot be easy to be a professor, unless you find someone to do all these things for you. (p. 90)"

"But what is stopping meritocracy in Italy? Why has respect for ability and talent, which seems to have developed in the Anglo-Saxon world, not developed here? Giuseppe De Rita blames the education system, particularly state schools, which have levelled everything down, while economist Diorella Kostoris points out that in Italy the dominant idea is to protect those who do not deserve it. Thus, the system guarantees everything to everyone, and the result is that it causes adverse selection, i.e. it penalises the best instead of rewarding them. (p. 169)"

"I've had enough of Padania. What is it? Where are its borders? I am from Savona, where we speak a different dialect from that of Genoa, which is forty kilometres away, let alone Trieste or Rimini. I'm fed up with the confusion between the inhabitants of northern Italy and the voters of the Lega. There are many northerners who do not vote for the Lega and feel Italian, not Padanian."

"I prepare thoroughly and set myself a goal. And I usually manage to achieve it."

"In Italy, to get something, you don't have to deserve it: ‘if you have to, make them feel sorry for you’. Closed systems are those that, hermetically sealed off from the surrounding reality, end up living a life of their own, based on rules, values and principles that are not shared by anyone other than those who are part of the system. In a closed organisation, we have leaders who would be followers elsewhere, we have performance evaluation criteria that would not be recognised as such in any other environment, we have numbers that would not be classified in other contexts. We have barons who would be squires elsewhere. (p. 195)"

"Pragmatism helps you achieve your goals, but it also makes you forget them."

"Those who get their hands on a professorship never let go and can afford to build their own power system: the privileges and prestige associated with teaching allow them to cultivate interests, and thus being a university professor can become a way to obtain commissions, consultancies, contracts, contacts and jobs useful for private studies. Without any exchange of money, but only through the exchange of favours and kindness, a system of power is consolidated that cuts out those who have no power. (p. 199)"

"When a colleague mentioned the phenomenon of early graduates during a dinner, we all thought he was referring to young prodigies who had managed to finish their studies in record time. In reality, early graduates are not prodigies, but rather individuals who, thanks to agreements stipulated by the institutions where they work or the professional associations to which they belong, were able to enrol directly in the second or third year of their degree programme. (p. 187)"