Italy Quotes - page 8
Without the prior pacification of Italy, it could happen that as soon as I leave to succor you, Venice, Florence, Ferrara and Francesco Sforza will ally together, pull all their resources and invite the French to support them... Since I will need to take with me to Germany the army besieging Florence, we need a swift decision by His Holiness in this matter.
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
Germany agreed to restrict her Navy to one third the size of the British but was accorded the right to build submarines, explicitly denied her by the peace treaty, up to 60 percent of British strength, and to 100 percent in case she decided it was necessary to her security, which she shortly did. Germany also pledged that her U-boats would never attack unarmed merchant ships, a word that she went back on from the very beginning of the second war. As soon as the deal with Britain was concluded Germany laid down two battleships, the Bismarck and Tirpitz, with a displacement of over 45,000 tons. By the terms of the Washington and London naval accords, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States had to limit their battleships to 35,000 tons. Great Britain, as the French contended, had no legal right to absolve Germany from respecting the naval clauses of the Versailles Treaty. And, as many Frenchmen added, no moral right either.
William L. Shirer
The more I deepen the topic of regions (I'm in Milan for this reason), the more I am dismayed by having to write about it. It doesn't take much 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. There's a reason why Bassetti already no longer speaks of a "Lombardy region", but of a "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?
Indro Montanelli
In Italy there is a fringe of imbeciles who believe they can resurrect communism. To bury the corpse of Marxism is not easy, because for many people that would mean denying the whole of existence. Of course Bertinotti is not one of those: he knows nothing about Marxism, he doesn't care, he is a little clown, an Italian-style populist who stirs masses of poor devils in the streets and still speaks of the working masses that only he sees.
Indro Montanelli
That devastating omniscience! That noxious, horn-spectacled refinement! And the money that such refinement means! For after all, what is there behind it, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money for influential friends, money for leisure and peace of mind, money for trips to Italy. Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O Lord, give me money, only money.
George Orwell
In all the countries where fascism became victorious, we had, before the growth of fascism and its victory, a wave of radicalism of the masses -- of the workers and the poorer peasants and farmers, and of the petty bourgeois class. In Italy, after the war and before 1922, we had a revolutionary wave of tremendous dimensions; the state was paralyzed, the police did not exist, the trade unions could do anything they wanted -- but there was not party capable of taking the power. As a reaction came fascism.
Leon Trotsky
The fascist movement in Italy was a spontaneous movement of large masses, with new leaders from the rank and file. It is a plebian movement in origin, directed and financed by big capitalist powers. It issued forth from the petty bourgeoisie, the slum proletariat, and even to a certain extent from the proletarian masses; Mussolini, a former socialist, is a "self-made" man arising from this movement.
Leon Trotsky
Italian fascism was the immediate outgrowth of the betrayal by the reformists of the uprising of the Italian proletariat. From the time the [first world] war ended, there was an upward trend in the revolutionary movement in Italy, and in September 1920 it resulted in the seizure of factories and industries by the workers. The dictatorship of the proletariat was an actual fact; all that was lacking was to organize it and draw from it all the necessary conclusions. The social democracy took fright and sprang back. After its bold and heroic exertions, the proletariat was left facing the void. The disruption of the revolutionary movement became the most important factor in the growth of fascism. In September, the revolutionary advance came to a standstill; and November already witnessed the first major demonstration of the fascists.
Leon Trotsky
I would do anything for Giancarlo and Valentino, When we were on a road trip in Italy for my 30th birthday, my father got pneumonia and...he just kind of died on me. It was horrible. But Giancarlo and Valentino were godsends. They came to my rescue. When somebody does a thing like that for you, well, you just love them beyond words.
Gwyneth Paltrow
If the Russian failure should become the tragic impotency of nations, if Italy should yield to the pressure of military might, if heroic France should be martyred on her flaming altars of liberty and justice and only the soul of heroism remain, if England should starve and her sacrifices and resolute warfare should prove in vain, if all these improbable disasters should attend, even then we should fight on and on, making the world's cause our cause.
Warren G. Harding
Russian GDP equals that of Italy – it should not be an existential threat to the West. We must shake ourselves free from the Kremlin's masterful fiction and confront the truth that we are in an asymmetric war. This is a war that we can win, and it matters that we do. We are sleepwalking through the end of our era of peace. It is time to wake up.
Eerik-Niiles Kross
There are mistakes, which governments have been doing when they were trying to face the economic crisis, since 2008. Slow choices, sometimes insufficient, sometimes wrong, never neutral. Political choices made by political governments which must assume their responsibility on them. In Italy we have adopted forward-looking choices, economically speaking, we have adopted austerity as leading value. Now it is time to work on development and growth, to create jobs and exit this crisis.
Federica Mogherini
I overtook, coming from Italy,
In Germany, a great and famous Earl
Of England; the most goodly fashioned man
I ever saw: from head to foot in form
Rare and most absolute; he had a face
Like one of the most ancient honoured Romans
From whence his noblest family was derived;
He was besides of spirit passing great
Valiant and learned, and liberal as the sun,
Spoke and writ sweetly, or of learned subjects,
Or of the discipline of public weals:
And 'twas the Earl of Oxford.
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
. . . and Dr. Isaiah Williams, whose body was recovered from a ravine near San Pablo. Inquiries are being hampered by what an Army spokesman termed the obstinate attitude of the local people. "They won't admit they know their left hands from their right,” he asserted. Here at home Senator Richard Howell (Rep., Col.) today launched a fierce attack on the quote chlorophyll addicts unquote who, he claims, are hamstringing American business, already staggering under the load of high unemployment and recession, by insisting that our manufacturers comply with regulations ignored by foreign competition. In Southern Italy rioting continues in many small towns formerly dependent on fishing. Meantime, dust storms in the Camargue . . .
John Brunner
