Indro Montanelli Quotes

[...] the love of power excludes all others.

Italian husbands, in order to buy their wives a fur coat, spend more than all their European collegues.

Il testimone, p. 386.

Cynics are all moralists, and merciless too.

L'Italia del Novecento, p. 536.

This materialist, hedonist and exhibitionist world doesn't thrill me either; and, considering that you are reading me, you should know it. But I would want to know the system that you have in mind, and don't have the courage or the ability to propose. A Franciscan world? Wonderful: but look around you, and tell me if you see a habit. A revised and corrected communism? It would end up like the other, even if it won't repeat its disasters. Believe me G., the only social and economic system acceptable today, in the West, is the one based on the market: a controlled and tempered capitalism, so to speak. It is desirable that it may also be corrected: this does not always happen, it is true. The trouble is that capitalism is made by capitalists - and those, I must admit, are often difficult to digest. Don't try to confuse my ideas, therefore. You won't succeed. I am probably three times your age, and I have seen where these generic tirades against "the multinationals" lead: sooner or later, someone will drop the bar and take the gun. I forgot: I sign my opinions, you throw the stone and hide your hand. Are you all so brave, you Seattle boys ?

I protagonisti, Rizzoli, 1976, p. 265.

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?

Men do not know how to appreciate or measure luck except that of others. Their own never.

Quando mi viene in mente un bell'aforisma, lo metto in conto a Montesquieu, od a La Rochefoucauld. Non si sono mai lamentati.

A real writer [...] doesn't look up to any other writer but himself.

Democracy is always, by nature and constitution, the triumph of mediocrity.

Parties had eventually put the wrong man in the wrong place. De Mita was not without merits. However, he completely lacked any relating to government. This was obvious while he served as Minister, and was not accomplishing more than a little: and that little bit, usually, would have been better not having been accomplished.

When a nice quote comes to mind, I always attribute it to Montesquieu, or to La Rochefoucauld. They've never complained.

Depression is a democratic sickness: it afflicts everyone.