Indro Montanelli (1909 – 2001)
Italian journalist and historian.
[A certain Italian judge] declared in an interview that at night he has no need of sleeping pills since, with regards to the Law, his conscience is at peace. We believe him without further ado. But if he asked himself the same question with regards to Justice, I ask myself if his sleep would be equally untroubled. And we are after all aware that he'll never ask himself this question, and on the contrary it would seem to him totally odd. Because, for an Italian judge, the Law and Justice have nothing to do with each other.
The American death penalty exists and it withstands in America because it was a basic and constitutive element of its birth and development. Of the famous 102 «Wandering Fathers» that for first they disembarked from the «Mayflower» in that Continent not to ransack the wealths as they made Spaniards and Portuguese in Mexico and in America of the South, but to build you a new and free society, around the two bystanders they were leftovers of jail that ran away the Justice and the jails of Europe, and a bystander they were men that liberty looked for, and above all that religious. The first ones had in pocket the gun, the seconds the Bible, but in his/her Calvinist version that of the retaliation, based on the conception of a God executioner that demands the death of whom without correct motive it gives it.
Depression is a democratic sickness: it afflicts everyone.
I know many crooks and they never preach, but I don't know anyone who preaches that isn't a crook also.
Fascism rewarded jackasses in uniform. Democracy gives priviliges to those in sports' gear. In Italy, political regimes come to pass. The jackasses remain. Triumphant.
This isn't a romanticized biography. It's a biography period. If here and there it resembles a romantic novel, the credit is only Garibaldi's, not his potrayers.
No, Travaglio kills no one. With a knife. He uses a weapon much more refined and unendictable in court: the archive.
Democracy is always, by nature and constitution, the triumph of mediocrity.
Pertini has interpreted as their best the worst about Italians.
The parties had finally put the wrong man at the wrong place. De Mita was not without his qualities. But they all became defects when endowed by the duties of a goverment. It was seen when he was minister, and was accomplishing little: and that little bit, usually, would have been better had he not accomplished it.
The only advice that I'm in the mood to give - and that I give regularly - to young people is this: fight for what you believe in. You will lose, just like I have lost, all the battles. But only one you may win. The one that you engage every morning, in front of the mirror.
I fly to Luxembourg on Berlusconi's usual twin engine, who accompanies us, glad to exhibit himself and exhibit his status in an international ceremony. The gold medal (but is it really gold?) is given to me by Gaston Thorn, head of the Luxembourg government. Berlusconi fills his notebook with addresses: of all the V.I.P.'s that he has met. He's a true climber that takes advantage of everything and throws nothing away.
This isn't the Right, this is the billy-club. Italians don't know how to go Right without ending up in the billy-club.
The nice thing about political pundits is that, when they answer a question, one no longer understands what they were asked.
Servitude, in many cases, is not forced upon by the masters, but a temptation of the servants.
The more I deepen the topic of regions (I'm in Milan for this reason), and the more I am dismayed by having to write about it. Little is needed to understand that what these Lombard regionalists are pursuing, knowingly or unknowingly, is a Cisalpine secessionist plan. And, once they've had the instrument, they'll manage to realize it. It isn't for no reason that Bassetti speaks already no longer of "Lombardy region", but of "Padania region", of which the rest of Italy would be but an appendix. If they'll succeed (and they will succeed), farewell Risorgimento! It wasn't but a fiction, agreed, and in practice it has failed. But with what will we replace it?
[...] the love of power excludes all others.
When a nice quote comes to mind, I always attribute it to Montesquieu, or to La Rochefoulcauld. They've never complained.
Italian husbands, in order to buy their wives a fur, spend more than all their European collegues.
[Gladio] had been founded in almost all the Countries that belonged to the Nato, and for wish of the Nato, aware that her European partners would not have been able to withstand the attack of a Power superarmata qual it was the Soviet union: they would have had to wait, for receives it the intervention of America. The fact shows that when this plan was revealed, any other Country found nothing to repeat of it. Only us Italian - the usual novelists imbeciles and worse that imbeciles - made subject of it of scandal and pretext of "yellow" that they still find credit, as its letter shows. Also I feel me scandalized, and an a little offended. But only from the fact that nobody has solicited me the adhesion to the Gladio: I would have given her with enthusiasm.