Sociologists From Italy

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"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)"

"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)"

"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)"

"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)"

"However, there is a happiness linked to eroticism that does not necessarily involve the sexual act. The sense of pleasure and ecstasy, for example. Ecstasy evokes an extraordinary, astonishing image. It means ‘being outside’, the feeling one experiences when one manages to detach oneself without resorting to the repression of one's condition. (p. 81)"

"What is the meaning of ecstasy today? That is, sublimation, the archetype of wonder and enjoyment, the loss of self and rationality, freedom from the obligation to desire. Is there anyone who seeks all this, [...], without artifice, without elaborate recipes? (p. 82)"

"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."

"The body has its seasons, and the youthful ones are not necessarily better than the later ones."

"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."

"Happiness is like a train without a timetable: one comes along every now and then. You cannot predict its arrival, nor know when it will leave again. Your job is to go to the station."

"Illness is a communicative language, not an anarchic mass of crazy cells. Sometimes our body is dissatisfied with the life it leads and complains, tries to resist, criticizes the brain for its choices."

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

"Unhappiness is a swamp where only surrender and renunciation dwell."

"Never give up on the idea that happiness can't be found for you somewhere in the world. Don't even do it on the last day of your life, because there will always be someone close to you who needs to glimpse it in your eyes."

"I have never believed that a fat person is more unhappy than a thin person, unless they are on the payroll of a fashion company."

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

"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."

"The puppy must learn that a rule is a rule and does not change according to the mood of the person holding the leash."

"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."

"The anthropological change in parents and grandparents therefore risks weighing on an already dramatic identity crisis among educators."

"Fill your computer screen with your own ideas, not those of others."

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

"(About Giorgio Gaber) He was an uncomfortable realist, he knew how to take stock of reality with the added bonus of wanting to change it, pointing out what he thought wasn't working. And I think this was mainly because he was a man of the theater. Because theater has always been about denunciation, while songs have not historically had the same function."

"Nando dalla Chiesa, Delitto imperfetto. Il generale, la mafia, la società italiana, Melampo, 2007. ISBN 9788889533208"

"Nando dalla Chiesa, A teatro per la gente (pp. 63 – 64); in Andrea Pedrinelli (a cura di), Gaber, Giorgio, il Signor G. Raccontato da intellettuali, amici, artisti, Kowalski, Milano, 2008. ISBN 978-88-7496-754-4"

"I think that the mafia society has shrunk, but the pro-mafia society has expanded, that is, the society that manages to enter into synergy and convergence with the mafia for many reasons. In the North, we have been studying this worrying phenomenon for years."

"In 1966, at the age of 17, I was struck by the sympathy that existed towards the Mafia. Even among my classmates at Garibaldi High School: when the boss Gerlando Alberti escaped a Carabinieri raid, many were happy and innocently took his side."

"My earliest [memories of Palermo] are linked to the barracks on Corso Vittorio Emanuele, now named after my father, Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa. It is the headquarters of the Carabinieri Legion of sicily. At the end of the 1940s, my maternal grandfather was the commander, and I bear his name. Every summer, we would go to visit him. I remember his apartment and the stables. Then, in the late 1960s, I returned to that barracks as a teenager with my father, a Carabinieri colonel."

"(About the choice of Tony Renis as artistic director of the 2004 Sanremo Festival) A country that puts a man who proudly claims his Mafia friendships at the helm of the most important show on the most important public television network, a man who hosts bosses in his home, who has them brought lunch in their security cells when they are arrested, this is a country that sends a devastating message: being friends with the Mafia is not a problem, in fact it can be an advantage. And it is the same country that then puts its mafia victims on stamps and gives medals to orphans and widows."

"When my government career came to an end, I received several offers to return to university as an associate professor. I chose Palermo because I consider it a bastion of legality, the place where I can best continue my civic and political commitment. Interviewer: What excites you most about returning? Nandoi dalla Chiesa: The desire to see my beloved places again and smell the scent of salt, jasmine, and orange blossom that I have carried with me. And then there is the sea at Mondello, the elegance of Via Libertà, and the delicious food. I know that many things have changed since my high school and military service days, but many others have remained the same. I will start again from these."

"Discovering Genoa as it is described in books (and as its inhabitants love to recount it) is an enchanting experience. Firstly, because it restores that minimum of trust in the written word and oral tradition without which you would wander aimlessly in your musings on the universe. Secondly, because Genoa is truly beautiful. You look at it and it shines in its marvelous buildings, at any height above sea level. What's more, it is literally dazzling in its succession of imperial white, ocher, moss green, and reddish brown. From the Old Port to Matitone in the late morning hours, which should be scorching but are not. The streets are not noisy, because the August traffic makes everyone more civilized and carefree. All around and above you is breathtaking architecture of shapes and colors that you can stop and contemplate in ecstasy, without fear that every minute you pause will make your shirt stickier. In short, when it's not raining and there's no “macaia” (I've never understood how to spell it), Genoa is truly the most beautiful seaside city in Italy."

"I believe it would be scientifically very serious if one day we were to write the history of the Mafia as certain left-wing writers have written the history of [[Fascism]: that is, of a handful of criminals who hold in subjection a people who would not want to submit but are forced to do so by terror or a past of resignation."