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Indro Montanelli Quotes
1909–2001 Italy
Indro Montanelli (22 April 1909 – 22 July 2001) was an Italian journalist and historian. Generally considered one of the greatest Italian journalists of the 20th century, he was among the 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the past 50 years named by the International Press Institute in 2000.
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22 quotes
When a nice quote comes to mind, I always attribute it to Montesquieu, or to La Rochefoucauld. They've never complained.
Democracy is always, by nature and constitution, the triumph of mediocrity.
Depression is a democratic sickness: it afflicts everyone.
Italian husbands, in order to buy their wives a fur coat, spend more than all their European collegues.
Which ever one of you will want to become a journalist, let him remember to choose his own master: the reader.
The nice thing about political pundits is that, when they answer a question, one no longer understands what they were asked.
Pertini has interpreted as their best the worst about Italians.
Cynics are all moralists, and merciless too.
Men do not know how to appreciate or measure luck except that of others. Their own never.
I know many crooks and they never preach, but I don't know anyone who preaches that isn't a crook also.
Politicians do nothing but ask of us, during every expiration of a legal statute, "a gesture of trust." But here trust is not enough; what's needed is an act of faith.
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.
A real writer [...] doesn't look up to any other writer but himself.
We Italians owe something to Elvis Presley: it's one of the rare occasions when we prefer to be Italian rather than American.
It isn't necessary to be socialists in order to love Pertini. Whatever he says or does, smells of cleanliness, of loyalty and of sincerity.
No, Travaglio kills no one. With a knife. He uses a weapon much more refined and unendictable in court: the archive.
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 portrayers.
The list of P2 affiliates includes, they say, 953 names, corresponding to the highest ranks of politics, the judiciary, the armed forces, bureaucracy, industry and finance. All ‘brothers’. It's proof that, in this country, woe betide only children.
Fascism rewarded jackasses in uniform. Democracy gives privileges to those in sports' gear. In Italy, political regimes come to pass. Jackasses remain. Triumphant.
Let not the usual abstract arguments be brought to me, like the sacredness of life: no one contests the right of everyone to arrange their own life, I don't see why their own death has to be contested.
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