Top 282 Italians Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled.

Tiles, the best furniture, fabrics, bath fixtures, bronze - just leaf through any design magazine and you immediately understand they're all 'Made in Italy.' We have the premier opera house in the world, La Scala, and behind the Nobel given to CERN is the research of many Italians.

Our country undergoes periodic episodes of extreme intolerance and fear of foreigners, refugees in particular. Not only were people of Japanese descent placed in internment camps during World War II, but so were some Italians and Germans.

When I think back, the neighbors were always sayin', 'Oh, that poor Julie, that poor orphan.' I loved it. The Italians would invite me in for dinner - it was an Italian neighborhood mostly. Oh, I loved it.

The English say, Yours Truly, and mean it. The Italians say, I kiss your feet, and mean, I kick your head.

I love places that have an incredible history. I love the Italian way of life. I love the food. I love the people. I love the attitudes of Italians.

For seven years, I had a business relationship in Milan, Milano. Dealing with Italians, just, let me tell you... Are we the same? Good lord, no! That's why Europe's fun - it's fun because it's different. A political project that seeks to make it all the same - it's ghastly.

In poetry, I have, since very young, loved poetry in translation. The Chinese, the French, the Russians, Italians, Indians and early Celts: the formality of the translator's voice, their measured breath and anxiety moves me as it lingers over the original.

In Rikers, you had the Italians over here, the Spanish over here, the Blacks here, then there would be your Christians here and your Muslim brotherhood here. It's just like the outside, but in very closed quarters where you have to get along or else. The sense of claustrophobia in 'Orange is the New Black' - that's real.

We've seen a lot of dirty politics in Ireland. We know from the French, their wonderfully neurotic presidents, that our hands are sort of tied. The Italians - I don't know where it stops. No nation can claim "We are an uncorrupt nation, therefore we will tell you what the morals of democracy are." Because it's going on everywhere.

We all have to accept accusations that we ignored the refugee crisis for far too long. The first time that I referred to the Mediterranean Sea as Europe's cemetery was in October 2013, when hundreds of people drowned off Lampedusa. Italians, Maltese, Greeks and Spaniards have been pleading for help for years. But nobody cared.

Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be "white"-- they would be Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and other engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity. (p. 107-108)

My parents, the effect that [Frank Sinatra] had on the Italian community, in terms of all our friends at the house were multicultural. We weren't just Italians. My dad's close friend was a black gentleman - this was back in the early 50s when Tony Bennett was reprimanded for having lunch, when he was in the military, with a black man.

I've had a fantastic career playing great parts. In many ways, the colour of my skin has been an asset because I've been asked to play certain roles as a result. I don't apologise for playing them anymore than Robert de Niro is sorry for playing American-Italians.

Italians know about human nature - they understand human nature perhaps better than anyone else does. They know that people are weak and greedy and lazy and dishonest and they just try to make the best of it; to work around it.

Everyone always says, Does it bother you that Italians are always portrayed as Mafia characters? No, it doesn't bother me. First of all, not everybody in my family is in the Mafia. I have one uncle who's clean.

Italians have always had a high savings rate. They love putting their money into their own government bonds - even more than in houses, stocks and gold. The higher rates climb, the happier they are to invest. So if austerity plans drive rates up, it's music to Italian ears.

New York has become almost a third-world country. When I was growing up it was mostly a Euro-American country. And it wasn't until LaGuardia was elected in 1933 that Italians were even considered Americans. We're at a great transition point in terms of population, demographics, and what it means to be a human being.

America is a younger country than England, obviously, and as self-awareness is forming in America - are we a collection of immigrants, are we a load of Italians and Germans and Jews and Brits and Irish, or are we a country with a soul and an identity? - there was a subliminal sense, they knew that the writers would be the ones who would answer those questions.

To my father, Notre Dame represented the underdogs of the world, the Italians, and the Polish people. I told him that one day I would play football for Notre Dame and worked hard to make that dream come true.

I always admire the French and the Italians who are very devoted to their marriages. They take them extremely seriously, but it is understood that there might be other visitors at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. You just never boast about. They never say anything, but that's what keeps marriages together.

The Italians and Spanish, the Chinese and Vietnamese see food as part of a larger, more essential and pleasurable part of daily life. Not as an experience to be collected or bragged about - or as a ritual like filling up a car - but as something else that gives pleasure, like sex or music, or a good nap in the afternoon.

American Green Berets have been on the ground reaching out to some of the factions there. But don't confuse them with combat troops. So we're only talking about airstrikes now. If there are any troops that go in there it will likely be the Italians.

Whoever heard of such a mixture of languages in one army, since there were French, Flemings, Frisians, Gauls, Sayonards, Lotharingians, Allemani, Bavarians, Normans, English, Scots, Aquitanians, Italians, Danes, Apulians, Iberians, Bretons, Greeks and Armenians.

The ISL brought together many football cultures such as Italians, Dutch, French, English and Spanish. There were no Brazilians! I brought something from Brazil, a team of professionals that changed something.

I love places that have an incredible history. I love the Italian way of life, I love the food, I love the people, I love the attitudes of Italians.

There's a great club in London called The Secret Sundays, and it's on a Sunday afternoon and it's outdoors, and it's mainly Italians that go, and they all look great, and they're dancing on the tables, and life's a party, and they're totally into the music, going mental, and that's when dance music is really fantastic, I think.

The themes that make one laugh always stem from poverty, hunger, misery, old age, sickness, and death. These are the themes that make Italians laugh, anyway.

Old St Petersburg remains a beautiful stage set but to the Russians it is not what Rome is to the Italians or Paris to the French. The decisions are made in the Kremlin. The city of Peter remains a museum, open from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

There was a Greek restaurant, the only place we could get Italian food. All of us Italians and many others from other parts of Europe used to go there, and Rajiv and his friends also. Some of his group knew some of my group, and we met just like that.

The Greeks, the Italians, and the Indians, from whom we get our ideas, erect monuments to ideas; we erect ours to men, and of such monuments we have an oversupply.

We have a house in Umbria that we bought just before we went to America. That meant we couldn't go there as often as we thought, but now we're back, we're going to start using it more. I love the light, the countryside, the language and the fact that children are accepted everywhere. The Italians get passionate about everything, too.

Importing foreign labor has always been the American way, beginning with 4 million slaves from Africa. Later came the Jews and Poles, the Hungarians, Italians and Irish, the Chinese and Japanese - everything you learned in sixth grade social studies about the great American melting pot.

To leave Italy at 17 without money and go to a country like England is very rare; Italians stay with the family until 30, 35. But I couldn't stand to live in this box anymore. I was getting bigger, and the box was getting smaller.

Most correspondents came from the former colonial powers - there were British, French, and a lot of Italians, because there were a lot of Italian communities there. And of course there were a lot of Russians.

The British are the last national group who can be insulted by Hollywood without any comeback. These days if you depict Italians as gangsters, Saudis as terrorists or Mexicans as violent drug dealers you'll never hear the end of it. But as still the largest - and possibly the richest - ethnic group in the States, the British just have to take it.

As our larynxes descended, we were able to make sounds with our mouths in new and far more expressive ways. Verbal language soon overtook physical gesturing as the primary means of communication for all human beings except Italians. (Earth (The Book), p. 36)

For instance, we have the largest Polish population of any city except for Warsaw, and the largest Lithuanian population outside Lithuania. More Italians, Greeks, Irish, Latinos, Serbians, and Croatians than you can shake a stick at. Chicago has it all, I don't know why I'd ever leave.

In New York there are between four and six big designers, and the shows last one week. There is something wrong here. It's our fault. We can't stand up for it. They take our ads, don't they? Why don't they want to stay longer in Milan? Why do we have to comply? We have the most beautiful brands, they are Italians.

Italy is still very much the same place it was 2,000 years ago. Italians are still the same .. there's a sense of beauty and a sense of dignity and a sense of living life to the full that infects everyone.

The problem that people have is that they eat too large portion sizes. Italians have been eating pasta for hundreds and hundreds of years, and we've never been an obese nation. We do the pasta, the pizza, all the cheeses, but it all has to do with how much you eat.

UNESCO provides protection for the great cultural institutions. There is something called the intangible cultural heritage list. And the Italians want to put Neapolitan pizza on it. But in order to do that, you have to show that whatever it is that you're trying to protect is under threat. And pizza is totally under threat from Pizza Hut and Domino's...

The more I see of Italy, the more I adore the Italians. They have so much heart, so much cheerfulness and gaiety, so much good humor. And the way they sing! Every now and then, when a silence falls in the streets, it is broken by some sudden singing voice, with a mellowness and a sweetness that makes you thrill.

Italians give their city sexes, and they all agree that the sex for a particular city is quite correct, but none of them can explain why. I love that. London's middle-aged and male, respectably married but secretly gay.

I really got the 'Rhoda' flavor from studying my stepmother, Angela, who's Italian, not Jewish. There's really so little difference between the speech patterns and family attitudes of Jews and Italians in the New York area, anyway.

Italians are never punctual; the café, the convenient place to wait, absolves them from that. There is no question of hanging about, no looking lost and unwanted or even disreputable, as there is in hotel lobbies or the foyers of restaurants. One just sits and enjoys the scene, and waits.

When I came to Mogadishu...here was one road built by the Italians. If you try to force me to stand down, I will leave the city as I found it. I came to power with a gun; only the gun can make me go.

Unlike leftover pasta, leftover risotto is viewed by Italians as a gift. Cooks shape it into balls or stuff it with a pinch of stewed meat or cheese. Then they bread and deep-fry the fritters until golden brown, yielding arancini, the indulgent 'little oranges' I can never resist.

For Russians, to whom Pushkin's poem 'Eugene Onegin' is sacred text, the ballet's story and personae are as familiar and filled with meaning as, for instance, 'Romeo' and 'Hamlet' are for us. Russians know whole stretches of it by heart, the way we know Shakespeare and Italians know Dante.

As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible.

I remember acting in a school play about the melting pot when I was very little. There was a great big pot onstage. On the other side of the pot was a little girl who had dark hair, and she and I were representing the Italians. And I thought: Is that what an Italian looked like?

For the multiculturalist, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are prohibited, Italians and Irish get a little respect, blacks are good, native Americans are even better. The further away we go, the more they deserve respect. This is a kind of inverted, patronising respect that puts everyone at a distance.

The biggest problem in Italy is work. And out-of-control immigration damages the labor market because Italians can't compete with illegal workers who are being exploited. So to restore dignity to work, we must control immigration.

[During the Renaissance] the Italians said, "We are one in the Father: we will go back." The Northern races said, "We are one in Christ, we will go on.

Time. Time. What is time? Swiss manufacture it, French hoard it, Italians squander it, Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist. Know what I say? I say time is a crook.

Looking from the outside at English football, at Spanish football, it's more interesting, and they have the champions and the celebrities that they want to see. But with the passion that Italians have for football, the pride that they have, I don't think the game will stay that way.

I spent five years in Italy, and the Italians have a slightly different lifestyle. Everything is a bit slower and more easygoing. You can feel that when you live there; you become a little more relaxed about typically 'German' things like accuracy and punctuality.

Some anthems are great for sports. You've got the Russian national anthem... 'O Canada,' how wonderful is that for hockey... but I chose the Italian national song because at my first World Cup, I saw the Italians play four times, and they won all four times - they won the championship.

No, the people standing before Christ and Pilate during the judgment scene do not condemn an entire race for the death of Christ anymore than the actions of Mussolini condemn all Italians, or the heinous crimes of Stalin condemn all Russians.

I love Italian opera - it's so reckless. Damn Wagner, and his bellowings at Fate and death. Damn Debussy, and his averted face. I like the Italians who run all on impulse, and don't care about their immortal souls, and don't worry about the ultimate.