Top 100 Quotes About Italians
#1. Some Italians are geniuses, but you have to find a balance.
Alain Prost
#2. I know Italians and I like them. A lot of my father's best friends were Italians.
Kirk Douglas
#4. The poor Americans are so busy defending the rights of Hindus in Pakistan, Moslems in India, Jews in Palestine, Koreans in Japan, Italians in Yugoslavia and Hungarians in Czechoslovakia that they simply cannot give a thought to Negroes in the United States.
George Mikes
#5. A story begins and it always passes from the subjunctive to the declarative. And Italians don't seem to care about making a fine distinction between that which is speculation and that which is fact.
Donna Leon
#6. We are first among the nations in per capita giving: it would take three Frenchmen, seven Germans, or fourteen Italians to equal the charitable donations of one American.
Parker J. Palmer
#7. The English say, Yours Truly, and mean it. The Italians say, I kiss your feet, and mean, I kick your head.
Wilfred Owen
#8. Lines were a new experience for the Italians, but they caught on quickly to this American phenomenon.
Laurie Fabiano
#9. Italians are just as good as Jews when it comes to guilt.
Anita Diamant
#10. 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.
Truman Capote
#11. His conclusion, preserved for posterity, was that the experiment of interning families of suspected nationalities - German, Japanese, Italians, and others - was a failure. Nonetheless,
Jan Jarboe Russell
#12. Anne Shirley, how often have I told you never to let one of those Italians in the house! I don't believe in encouraging them to come around at all.
L.M. Montgomery
#13. Sonia Gandhi and her husband have always been persons I look at with a lot of respect. Of course, one of the reasons we look at India with a lot of sympathy and enthusiasm is Sonia Gandhi. Now she is Indian, not Italian, but she will always represent a myth for Italians.
Luca Cordero Di Montezemolo
#14. The power which the Hellenes and even the Italians possessed, of civilizing and assimilating to themselves the nations susceptible of culture with whom they came into contact, was wholly wanting in the Phoenicians.
Theodor Mommsen
#15. Italians who speak Italian should be illegal, or at least come with warning labels - may make your panties explode.
Penny Reid
#16. When the Allies bombed the Italians on the island of Pantelleria in June, 1943, General Spaatz, of the United States Air Corps, concluded that bombing can reduce to the point of surrender any first-class nation now in existence, within six months.
Paul Fussell
#17. When I am walking in Central Park, I recognize the Italians. Because an Italian, even when he jogs, he's dressed perfect.
Diego Della Valle
#18. The Italians say it is not necessary to be a stag; but we ought not to be a tortoise.
Benjamin Disraeli
#19. Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land.
E. M. Forster
#20. I come from a family of Catholic Italians, and that will always be in my blood.
Jenna Morasca
#21. I just want to remind everybody that it's Columbus Day. That all those of you that know Italians and like Italians are the people that might venture on to a ship and travel to explore and find new lands, this is your day. It's not St. Patty's Day. That's a different day entirely.
Les Miles
#22. Indeed, when I came to Italy, I expected to encounter a certain amount of resentment, but have received instead empathy from most Italians. In any reference to George Bush, people only nod to Berlusconi, saying","We understand how it is - we have one, too.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#23. In return, Giovanni told me that empathizing Italians say L'ho provato sulla mia pelle, which means 'I have experienced that on my own skin.' Meaning, I have also been burned or scarred in this way, and I know exactly what you're going through.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#24. In Paris, choosing a dress is a monumental decision. In Milan, it's a kick.
Chris Dee
#26. In this same library we saw some drawings by Michael Angelo (these Italians call him Mickel Angelo,) and Leonardo da Vinci. (They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.)
Mark Twain
#27. You guys put them all on a boat and sent them over here to North America a couple of hundred years ago." "The English maybe would do such a thing. Is what they did with the criminals, so maybe they would send you the smelly cats. But no the Italians. We would no be so cruel.
Lynsay Sands
#28. Just give the Italians a chance for drama and they take it with both hands.
Ingrid Bergman
#29. Everybody says it: black, white; everybody calls me a legend. Italians, Jews. Everybody.
Roberto Duran
#30. I was so besotted with '8½' that, when it was on TV, I used to take pictures with my 35-mm. camera of the frames of the film. That was the first time I'd ever really seen Italians on screen.
David Chase
#31. The Italians are wise before the deede, the Germanes in the deede, the French after the deede.
[The Italians are wise before the deed, the Germens in the deed, the French after the deed.]
George Herbert
#32. Look, people have an image of Italians. When I go somewhere in the world, I don't care where it is, when they look at me it's not about my intelligence. It's who can I beat up.
Danny Aiello
#33. How is the newcomer to deal with Rome? What is one to make of this marble rubble, this milk of wolves, this blood of Caesars, this sunrise of Renaissance, this baroquery of blown stone, this warm hive of Italians, this antipasto of civilization?
Shana Alexander
#34. I'm secretly a clown, or maybe it's not much of a secret! I'm a little putzo, as the Italians say - a little bit loopy.
Matthew Settle
#35. In the Bronx, you have the southern Italians; in Queens, the Greeks, Koreans and Chinese; in Brooklyn, the Jewish community; and in Harlem, the Hispanics - all with their own markets.
Daniel Boulud
#36. The whole world is festering with unhappy souls: The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles' Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch; and I don't like anybody very much!
Sheldon Harnick
#37. It is not impossible to rule Italians, but it would be useless.
Benito Mussolini
#38. The Italians even have a word for the mark left on a table by a moist glass (culacino) while the Gaelic speakers of Scotland, not to be outdone, have a word for the itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whiskey. (Wouldn't they just?) It's sgriob.
Bill Bryson
#39. 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)
Cornel West
#40. I have been further enlightened by the conversation and correspondence of some illustrious Italians, whom I would gladly name, were I not afraid of exposing them to danger.
Edmond About
#41. He's in the mafia, you know."
Jan frowned. "Not everyone who's Italian is in the mafia."
"That may be true in Italy-but here there are hardly enough Italians to run a mafia. They have to belong.
Marshall Thornton
#42. The pride taken by the Italians in their gifted women is among the most important facts in the history of their Renaissance.
Walter Shaw Sparrow
#43. My family was all born in Sicily and I'm Italian-American. They're the real thing. They're authentic Italians, and honestly they're the most open-minded, nicest people in the world and nothing can really offend them. That's the way I think true Sicilians are.
Vinny Guadagnino
#44. Italians are great improvisers. If something unforeseen happens, they throw up their hands, and they adjust.
Max Von Sydow
#45. You see how Spanish, Italians, Portuguese play football. I don't say they are perfect, I say English football has a few things to learn from them in the same way they have a lot of things to learn from English football.
Jose Mourinho
#46. Erhaps it was the difference in age between the countries - America with its expansive youth, building all those drive-in movie theaters and cowboy restaurants; Italians living in endless contraction, in the artifacts of generations, in the bones of empires.
Jess Walter
#47. Abstract paintings must be as real as those created by the 16th century Italians.
Frank Stella
#48. The Italians are not passionate: passion has deep reserves. They are easily moved, and often affectionate, but they rarely have any abiding passion of any sort.
D.H. Lawrence
#50. Second-generation Hispanics marry non-Hispanics at a higher rate than second-generation Irish or Italians. Second-generation Hispanics' English language capability rates are higher than previous immigrant groups'.
Jeb Bush
#51. Italians have a little joke, that the world is so hard a man must have two fathers to look after him, and that's why they have godfathers.
Mario Puzo
#52. The Italians are very strong defensively. They showed in Euro 2000 how good defensively they are.
Alan Hansen
#53. Italians can not beat us, but we can certainly lose against them.
Johan Cruyff
#54. I received a shot and broke my tooth. Unfortunately, we Italians only eat pasta al dente.
Roberto Baggio
#55. My goodness carina mia, you are so thin. You do not eat enough. Mangia, mangia, mangia! [Alicia's Italian mother's view of her daughter.]
Celia Conrad
#57. Berlusconi's advice to Italians trying to escape poverty: "Do it my way and earn more money".
Silvio Berlusconi
#59. The only reason Toronto is no longer the dullest city on earth is that it is no longer full of Anglo-Canadians. It is full of Hong Kong Chinese. And not a few Italians.
Joel Garreau
#60. By 1948, the Italians had begun to pull themselves together, demonstrating once more their astonishing ability to cope with disaster which is so perfectly balanced by their absolute inability to deal with success
Gore Vidal
#61. Take care, these Italians, full of failings, are neither you, nor me; they are your neighbors, the ones you meet on the staircase and whom you do not like to greet.
Alberto Sordi
#62. The Italians live well. They have problems, like all countries, but they are well-dressed, the women are pretty.
Francois Pinault
#63. As a result, Italians who today bear illustrious noble names are not necessarily the progeny of nobility but may be instead the descendants of poor Jews who sought a new life by passing through the doors of the Catechumens. Of
David I. Kertzer
#64. But I make a distinction between the doctrines of the Church, which matter, and the structure invented by half a dozen Italians who got to be pope and which is of very little use to anybody.
Bernadette Devlin
#65. Youth and what the Italians so prettily call stamina. The vigor, the fire, that enables you to love and create. When you've lost that, you've lost everything.
Simone De Beauvoir
#66. 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.
Donna Leon
#67. That's what I admire about youngish Italians, the slow dimunition of ambition, the recognition that the best is far behind them.
Gary Shteyngart
#68. The Italians are not indulgent, as Americans are. They don't have the patience to teach young singers how to move. They think you should learn in school.
Marcello Giordani
#69. For on Cardinal Rohan saying to me that the Italians did not understand war, I replied that the French did not understand politics.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#70. 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.
Fulcher Of Chartres
#71. One can rarely say enough about the kindness of Italians. One is always treated as a human being who needs unpredictable things - like a moment by oneself with a bottle on the beach. They have a true gift for what can only be called spontaneous delicacy.
Lawrence Osborne
#72. Everything changed, and eleven months later, here I was in the middle of the night with a gungho major, playing secret agent, hoping some Frenchie didn't put a bullet in my skull before I gave the Germans and Italians their chance.
James R. Benn
#74. If you score against the Italians you deserve a goal.
Ron Atkinson
#75. I learned that the Italians are right. It isn't what happens to us that counts. It's what we do with what happens to us that makes all the difference
Joan D. Chittister
#76. The English learned, in my view, how to use harmony much earlier than the French or the Italians, or the Germans.
Tod Machover
#77. And I said to myself, here's the problem with the world: The Italians are too Italian, and nobody else is Italian enough.
Mary Jo Salter
#78. The Italians have long known what makes a livable town or city.
Norman Foster
#79. Anyone who starts badmouthing Latino immigrants is not only a racist but ignorant. You need to refer them to what was written about the Irish, the Jews, the Italians, any group you want.
James Gray
#80. 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.
Riccardo Tisci
#81. Alexia seemed to recall hearing one matron complain that the Italians were very passionate in their support of balls.
Gail Carriger
#82. 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?
Al Pacino
#83. The lucky thing was that I was Italian; when the other Italians saw me fight back, they came to my defence.
Gregory Corso
#84. Even American women are not felt to be persons in the same sense as the male immigrants among the Hungarians, Poles, Russian Jews,
not to speak of Italians, Germans, and the masters of all of us
the Irish!
Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi
#85. Italians tend to be less rigidly moral and law-abiding than do Anglo-Saxons. They also have a profound suspicion of the state and most of its agencies.
Donna Leon
#86. Hispanics have a long tradition of defiance against authority. Come to that, the Irish and Italians and Jews also have a long tradition of defiance against authority. Thinking it over, everybody has a long tradition of defiance against authority. (Except the Germans, of course.)
Donald E. Westlake
#87. I think that we must come together progressively, with the British, the Germans, the Spanish, the Italians and with the new members of the European Union, we must make an effort to forge closer links.
Jean-Pierre Raffarin
#88. 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.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#89. I never went to a psychologist or psychiatrist in my life. Never. You know, Italians are a little prejudiced against that kind of thing.
Francis Ford Coppola
#90. Undoubtedly Italians use hand gestures and body language more creatively and prolifically than other European cultures.
Ross King
#92. There is in the DNA of the Italians a bit of madness, which in the overwhelming majority of cases is positive. It is genius. It is talent. It's the masterpieces of art. It's the food, fashion, everything that makes Italy great in the world.
Matteo Renzi
#93. In my world, reserved Italians, heterosexual hairdressers, clouds without silver linings, ignoble savages, hard-hearted whores, advantageous ill-winds, sober Irishmen, and so on, are not permitted to exist.
Martin Amis
#94. The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc.
Emma Goldman
#95. 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.
Joseph Wechsberg
#96. As an Irish person, there's a historical fascination with America: America is the default green and promised land for Irish people and Italians; that's what we grow up with.
Dylan Moran
#97. Durum semolina, golden wheat wafting in Italian fields. Can you imagine how astonished the Italians would be if they knew that what they were exporting in 1971 was really loneliness
Haruki Murakami
#98. Many immigrant groups have faced hostility. The Irish did in their time. Jews did. Italians did - and now, Muslim immigrants.
Tom Gjelten
#99. The Italians are the most civilized people. And they're very warm. Basically, they're Jews with great architecture.
Fran Lebowitz
