Mario Monti Quotes

You may as well know that one American national trait which irritates many Americans and must be convenient for our critics is that we relentlessly advertise our imperfections.

American gentlemen are a cross between English and French men, and yet really altogether like neither. They are more refined and modest than Frenchmen, and less manly, shy, and rough, than Englishmen. Their brains are finer and flimsier, their bodies less robust and vigorous than ours. We are the finer animals, and they the subtler spirits. Their intellectual tendency is to excitement and insanity, and ours to stagnation and stupidity.

As soon as I came to L.A., I was told that I was exotic. I'd think, But I'm from Miami! I'm as American as a cheeseburger!

La Scala is easily one of the top 10 symbols of Italy's cultural excellence. That makes it vital to our global image. Closing it would send a message to the rest of the world that Italy doesn't care.

The French have the reputation of being arrogant. I don't think it's arrogance but a certain authenticity.

Everyone has seen photographs of Mexicans wearing those big sombreros. When you come to Mexico, the astonishing thing is, nobody wears these hats at all.

It was always said that the big distinction between the French and the English is that the English are intelligent and the French are intellectual.

I have always been considered to be the most German among Italian economists, which I always received as a compliment, but was rarely meant to be one.

When I won the world championship, in 1972, the United States had an image of, you know, a football country, a baseball country, but nobody thought of it as an intellectual country.

You know, I'm Australian, and we have got the worst sense of humor. We are cruel to each other.

It's almost as if people think that in Latin America we're not hip to what's happening here.

How is it that the country that invented Hollywood and Madison Avenue allowed such a destructive and parodied image of itself to become the intellectual coin of the realm overseas?

You can't generalise about an entire country, but I like the energy of British men.

For so long, the world has viewed West Indian culture as semiliterate and backward, which it is not. In my work, I have tried to give that world an exposure so the world can better understand it.

If I go to England, they know I'm not an Englishman, but most Americans think I'm English.

We Italians are always criticising ourselves.

For so long, Arab culture has been misconceived by the western mindset as exotic, or more recently, as dangerous, so spaces like Mathaf are vital for asserting a sense of connectedness.

I jumped off a bridge in Italy, is that culturally insensitive? Is saying 'mamma mia' culturally insensitive?

Germans are flummoxed by humor, the Swiss have no concept of fun, the Spanish think there is nothing at all ridiculous about eating dinner at midnight, and the Italians should never, ever have been let in on the invention of the motor car.

Italy is not widely thought of as a pioneer of youth culture in the way, say, the UK is.

We're Americans. I don't consider us to be evil, I just don't think we know any better. We're a really young culture. We're hillbillies, and the rest of the world sees us that way. I travel all over the world, and probably the only worse rednecks than us are the Australians. And they're an even younger country.

I have no idea what a British sensibility or a British sense of humor is. I have no concept of what that is. I have no concept of what American sensibility is. I was born in Great Britain, but I was only there for six months, and we moved to Belgium, where I grew up. I love Britain, I lived there for nine years doing shows and things, but I don't know what a British sensibility is. I'd like to have someone tell me what an American sensibility is.

It was clearly one of those mornings when I was particularly American.

I think that Danish people may be thought off as the happiest people, but honestly...I love America.

And I have the sunset, and the Tuscan wine, and the white teeth of the women in Rome. I am a traveler in Romance.