Indro Montanelli Quotes

27 Sourced Quotes

[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.

Indro Montanelli
Also we Italians have something to Elvis Presley: to offer one of the rare occasions when we prefer to be Italian rather than American.

Indro Montanelli
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.

Indro Montanelli
Which ever one of you will want to become a journalist, let him remember to choose his own master: the reader.

Indro Montanelli
Fascism rewarded jackasses in uniform. Democracy gives priviliges to those in sports' gear. In Italy, political regimes come to pass. The jackasses remain. Triumphant.

Indro Montanelli
A real writer [...] looks not in another writer but himself.

Indro Montanelli
Pertini has interpreted as their best the worst about Italians.

Indro Montanelli
I have never dreamt of contesting the Church her right to remain faithful to herself, meaning to the commandments that come from Doctrine... but that she expects to impose these commandments upon me who do not have the good fortune of being a believer, trying to pour them into civil law in a way that they become obligatory even to us non-believers, is it right? To me it doesn't seem so.

Indro Montanelli
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.

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

Indro Montanelli
I do not want to suffer, I do not have a christian concept of suffering. They tell us that suffering elevates the spirit; no suffering is something that hurts and that's all, it elevates nothing. And therefore I fear suffering. Because with regards to death, I, who in everything believe to be moderate, am absolutely radical. If we have a right to life, we have also a right to death. It rests on us, and it must be regognized the right to choose the when and the how of our own death.

Indro Montanelli
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.

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

Indro Montanelli
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.

Indro Montanelli
The nice thing about political pundits is that, when they answer a question, one no longer understands what they were asked.

Indro Montanelli
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.

Indro Montanelli
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.

Indro Montanelli
Certainly, for a newspaper director, to have within arm's reach a Travaglio, about whom every starring actor, supporting cast and extra of Italian political life he is ready upon cold request to provide an inquiry brief refined in the most minute details is a nice comfort. But also a bit unsettling. The day I asked him if in that archive, into which no one is allowed to stick their nose, there were a brief with my name on it, Marco changed the subject.

Indro Montanelli
[Addressed to Berlusconi who wanted to impose himself on the editorial style of "Il Giornale"] In the art of entrepeneurship, you are certainly a genius, and I an asshole. But in the art of argument the genius is me, and you the asshole.

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

Indro Montanelli
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.

Indro Montanelli
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.

Indro Montanelli
Depression is a democratic sickness: it afflicts everyone.

Indro Montanelli
I know many crooks and they never preach, but I don't know anyone who preaches that isn't a crook also.

Indro Montanelli
No, Travaglio kills no one. With a knife. He uses a weapon much more refined and unendictable in court: the archive.

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

Indro Montanelli
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?

Indro Montanelli