"[In Italy,] continuing to do 'what has always been done' is not convenient: living on rents and clinging to the past would equate to a slow suicide,… - Alessandro Magnoli Bocchi

"(...) throughout the Peninsula, informal and personal social ties are more important than formal and impersonal ones. When the community (Gemeinschaft, in German) counts more than society (Gesellschaft), family relationships - making up for the absence of the State - prevail over collective responsibilities, weakening civil society". Original quote: "(...) lungo tutta la Penisola, i legami sociali informali e personali sono più importanti di quelli formali e impersonali. Quando la comunità (Gemeinschaft, in tedesco) conta più della società (Gesellschaft), le relazioni familistiche – supplendo all’assenza dello Stato – prevalgono sulle responsabilità collettive, indebolendo la società civile".

"By nature, ‘complex systems’ grow or decay at exponential rates. As suggested by the butterfly-effect in chaos theory, a negligible change in an ‘original state’ can lead to a radically different ‘resulting state’. In other words, a minor event might have large, unpredictable effects - depending on its: a) position in network (i.e.: initial conditions); b) degree of connectivity (i.e.: ease of interaction); and c) size of the impact".

"The future is not a straight-line-projection of the past. Yet, most people - even scientists - think in linear, cause-effect patterns. The real world works differently: events follow discontinuous random walks, not predictable trends. At best, we can only assess the ‘likelihood of forthcoming events’. A rule-based approach is often misleading; to forecast future developments, we need probabilistic - rather than deterministic – thinking".