Osho thoughts on stupidity, some quotes and various reflections on intelligence versus stupidity with references to B. Russell, governments and politicians.

Osho’s reflections on Bertrand Russell and stupidity center on the distinction between accumulated knowledge and authentic, living intelligence. He viewed Russell as a highly intellectual man restricted by his reliance on logic, and perceived human stupidity not as a lack of information, but as a state of unconsciousness and rigid adherence to the past. Osho acknowledged Russell’s high intelligence but highlighted his inability to accept certain religious concepts (such as the virgin birth) due to his strictly scientific and logical mind. Osho argued that Russell, while intelligent, was unable to grasp the mystical dimension of truth because he was a philosopher rather than a mystic. Osho felt that individuals like Russell collected points of argument (as in Why I am Not a Christian) but remained trapped within the rational mind, which cannot access true meditation. Osho defined stupidity not as lower IQ, but as living in a state of “sleep,” unawareness, and routine.

Osho insisted that knowledgeable people (those with degrees, degrees, and extensive memory) are often the most stupid, as they use knowledge to hide their lack of being. Stupid minds operate based on past programming, ready-made answers, and fear of the unknown. Osho taught that recognizing one’s own stupidity is the first ray of intelligence. “To understand that one is stupid is to already be intelligent”. Osho proclaimed a need for a revolution against human stupidity, which he believed was leading humanity toward destruction through unconsciousness, environmental ruin, and war.In essence, Osho argued that the only way beyond stupidity is through awareness and meditation, which allow an individual to move from a “knowledgeable mind” to a “conscious being”.

In INTELLIGENCE: The Creative Response to Now, Osho challenges the common conception that the best way to promote intelligence is to train the intellect. Intellect is logical, he says; intelligence is paradoxical. Intellect takes things apart to see how they work; intelligence puts things together to see the functioning of the whole. When our education systems put too much emphasis on developing intellect, an imbalance is created and both the individual and the society suffer. It is only through intelligence that we can respond creatively to the challenges of a changing world. By exploring the distinction between intellect and intelligence, INTELLIGENCE encourages readers to be more aware of how they approach problems – logical, emotional, and practical – and how they solve them.

The coming revolution in the world is not going to be of the poor against the rich, the proletariat against the bourgeois. The coming revolution in the world is going to be between the stupidity of humanity and the intelligentsia.
Osho

To be crazy, some intelligence is needed.
Osho

You will always find stupid, ignorant people very dogmatic. The more ignorant a person is, the more dogmatic. This is one of the greatest misfortunes in the world, that the foolish are absolutely certain, and the wise are hesitant. Buddha is very hesitant.
Osho

If somebody moves from poverty into spirituality, he has great intelligence. And if someone remains in richness and still does not move towards spirituality, he is just stupid and nothing else.
Osho

If you don’t become aware of the three idiots within you, you will never become a sage. It is by overcoming the three idiots that one truly becomes wise.
Osho

Stupid people ask about God, the intelligent person asks about death. The people who go on asking about God never find God, and the person who asks about death is bound to find God
Osho

A person who lives in a sort of sleep can never be intelligent – and awareness is the purest flame of intelligence.
Osho

Man is so stupid, unbelievably stupid. He goes on throwing the responsibility on somebody else. Unless you stop this you will never become religious.
Osho

Unless a person is stupid he cannot be a politician. It is not that the politicians are stupid – in fact, only stupid people are attracted towards politics.
Osho

Stupidity has always the shadow of meanness. The more intelligent you are, the less mean you are. The utterly intelligent person cannot have any meanness; it is impossible. He can have only love and compassion. The stupid person has to be mean because that is the only way he thinks he can win.
Osho

The most stupid thinks that he is very intelligent. Hence you go on giving compliments to each other. All those compliments are lies – and everybody is ready to believe.
Osho

The intelligent person is rebellious. He does not allow others to decide for him; he keeps the right to himself. Hence, stupid people become saints very easily because they allow the society to condition them.
Osho

The group is always ruled by the stupid person. The stupid cannot become intelligent, but the intelligent can relapse easily and become stupid. Have you seen any stupid person doing anything intelligent ever? But you have seen many intelligent people doing stupid actions, foolish actions.
Osho

If a person has known only sex as life, he is stupid, he is an idiot.
Osho

If you are not a master of yourself, then trying to be a master of others is just a substitute to befool yourself, to deceive yourself, and that is what the stupidity consists of.
Osho

The mediocre mind never allows the genius; the mediocre person is happy with other mediocre people. The stupid people are happy with stupid leaders. The more stupid the leader is, the more people are happy – because he looks so much like them.
Osho

A dishonest life cannot be a life of bliss. You think you are deceiving others; you are simply destroying yourself and destroying all possibilities of growth, because growth comes through sincerity, honesty, authenticity. Growth comes through accepting your truth in its total nudity. And then life is certainly a joy, then life is certainly a bliss. But you cannot expect anything else from a scholar. A scholar is bound to be stupid, otherwise why should he be a scholar in the first place? An intelligent person will seek and search for truth. He will not bother about Mahayana sutras and scriptures. I have no respect for scholarship.
Osho

By the time a person becomes old he becomes very cunning – not wise, not intelligent. Remember: if you were stupid when you were a child you will be more stupid when you are old. You will have a long, long-rooted stupidity in you with great foliage and flowers and fruits. Whatsoever you have will grow with your age. If you meditate then meditation will grow. But just by becoming old you cannot be wise.
Osho

Desires are never fulfilled. In the very nature of things they cannot be fulfilled. The wakeful person looks into the desiring mind and laughs. The desiring mind is the most stupid mind, because it is desiring something which cannot be fulfilled in the very nature of things. Just as you cannot get oil through sand – you can go on and on working on the sand, but you will not get oil out of it, it does not exist in the sand, it is impossible – exactly like that, desire is just a deception.
Osho

If you follow the fool’s way, you can become very rich, you can become famous. You can become a president of a country, a prime minister of a country – you can become anything. You can have as much wealth as you want – just follow the fool’s way. Don’t be intelligent, remain stupid, because in fact, except for a stupid person who wants to run after money? Yes, sometimes it happens, money comes to the intelligent person, but it comes running after him, he does not go… Fame also sometimes comes to the intelligent person. It comes on its own; he is not interested at all.
Osho

Man is so stupid, unbelievably stupid. He goes on throwing the responsibility on somebody else. Unless you stop this you will never become religious. A religious person is one who takes the responsibility upon himself. The first thing that is making you miserable is your desiring, constant desiring for this and that. Stop that. And when there is no desire there are no thoughts either. The function of the thoughts is to help you desire; they are instrumental. If you don’t have desires, thoughts are bound to disappear of their own accord. And when there are no desires, no thoughts… YOU ARE STILL. You are calm, collected, centered, rooted.
Osho

Money is not bad in itself. That’s my basic approach towards existence: money is neutral, it depends on you. In the hands of a man of understanding, money is tremendously beautiful. It can become music, it can become art, it can become science, it can become religion. It is not money that is bad, it is the person. The stupid person, if he has money, does not know what to do with it; his money creates more greed. Money can free you from greed, but the stupid person changes money into more greed. It becomes anger, it becomes sexuality, it becomes lust. The more money the stupid person has, the more stupid he becomes, because he becomes more powerful to do stupid things. With the wise, everything is transformed into wisdom.
Osho

Real intelligence is needed to move from the world of doing to the world of being. If somebody moves from poverty into spirituality, he has great intelligence. And if someone remains in richness and still does not move towards spirituality, he is just stupid and nothing else. Being rich and not being aware of spirituality is stupidity. Being poor and not being aware of spirituality can be forgiven, but the rich person cannot be forgiven – because he HAS – can’t he see that he has everything and yet he has nothing? Death will be coming and it will take all that he possesses. Doing is a means to having. When doing succeeds, you have. But when you have, everything starts failing, everything starts looking futile, everything starts looking childish. And to know that everything in this world is futile is the beginning of turning in, of conversion.
Osho

Somebody says to you, “How beautiful you are!” and you believe it immediately. Nobody ever objects. I have told it to many people; nobody ever objects. I have never come across a person who will object, “No, you are wrong because I know my face. I see it in the mirror every day.” You say it to anybody, even the ugliest. Say it to a camel, and he will nod his head. He will say, “Right. I had always known it. You are the first intelligent person who has given it recognition.” Even the ugliest person deep down thinks he is beautiful. He believes, otherwise it will be difficult to exist, to live. The most stupid thinks that he is very intelligent. Hence you go on giving compliments to each other. All those compliments are lies – and everybody is ready to believe. And it is not only in the ordinary life. When you enter into your inner journey, there also you expect recognition.
Osho

Stupid people ask about God, the intelligent person asks about death. The people who go on asking about God never find God, and the person who asks about death is bound to find God – because it is death that transforms you, your vision. Your consciousness is sharpened because you have raised a real question, an authentic question, the most important question of life. You have created such a great challenge that you can’t remain asleep for long; you will have to be awake, you will have to be alert enough to encounter the reality of death.
Osho

The intelligent person is rebellious. He does not allow others to decide for him; he keeps the right to himself. Hence, stupid people become saints very easily because they allow the society to condition them. At least in that particular society they will be very much respected. To others they will look very stupid, to others they will look insane, but to that particular society which has conditioned them they will be great saints.
Osho

The unintelligent person lives like driftwood; he becomes so much concerned with sightseeing that he forgets all about the ultimate, he forgets all about the goal, he forgets all about the journey. He becomes too absorbed in sightseeing. He is curious but his curiosity is superfluous. He never inquires, because inquiry needs guts, inquiry is risky. Inquiry means you will be facing great problems, you will be coming across ultimate problems, and who knows whether you will be able to solve them or not? He remains only curious. The curious person is the stupid person; his curiosity keeps him occupied, his curiosity keeps him engaged, so he never becomes aware of the real problems.
Osho

There is no greater magic than meditation. To transform the negative into the positive, to transform darkness into light, that is the miracle of meditation. To transform a trembling person into a fearless soul, to transform a person who was clinging to every stupid thing into a nonclinger, into a nonpossessor, that is what happens through meditation. Buddha used to call meditation a great sword, it cuts your problems at the very root. It makes you aware that you need not be afraid of your inner abyss. It is beautiful, it is blissful. You have not experienced its bliss and beauty because you have never gone into it, you have always been escaping. You have not tasted of it; it is nectar, it is not poison. But how are you going to know without tasting it? You are running away from something which can become your life’s fulfillment. You are running away from something which is the only thing worth achieving. You are running away from yourself.
Osho

Unless a person is stupid he cannot be a politician. It is not that the politicians are stupid – in fact, only stupid people are attracted towards politics. What is politics basically? The desire to dominate others – and that is the most stupid thing in life. The intelligent person tries to be a master of himself, and the stupid person tries to be master of others. And how can you be a master of others if you are not a master of yourself? If you are not a master of yourself, then trying to be a master of others is just a substitute to befool yourself, to deceive yourself, and that is what the stupidity consists of.
Osho

Your love affairs are so stupid. And then you are waiting for something great to happen out of them. In the first place you don’t have any love in your heart. That’s why everybody wants to be loved. You want to be loved; your woman also wants to be loved. Naturally there is conflict: both are ready to take and nobody is ready to give. And how to give? You don’t have it in the first place. Only a loving person – one who is already loving – can find the right partner. This is my observation: if you are unhappy you will find somebody who is unhappy. Unhappy people are attracted towards unhappy people. And it is good, it is natural. It is good that the unhappy people are not attracted towards happy people; otherwise they will destroy their happiness. It is perfectly okay. Only happy people are attracted towards happy people. The same attracts the same. Intelligent people are attracted towards intelligent people; stupid people are attracted towards stupid people.
Osho

A person who lives in a sort of sleep can never be intelligent – and awareness is the purest flame of intelligence. A man who lives in sleep becomes more and more stupid. If you live in stupor, you will become stupid, you will become dull. This dullness has to be destroyed. And it can be destroyed only by becoming more aware. Walk with more awareness. Eat with more awareness. Talk with more awareness. Listen with more awareness.
Osho

I would like this country to become rich, scientific, technological, healthy, well nourished – not only this country but the whole of humanity. And I don’t see that it is against religion. On the contrary: the more rich a country is, the more religious it can become – because richness gives you opportunity, richness gives you facility, richness gives you time and space and energy, to move inwards. If you don’t move, that’s your responsibility. Nothing is wrong in being rich. If a rich person is not religious, he is simply mediocre, stupid; it is nothing against richness: it is simply an indication that he is foolish. If a rich person is not religious, I call him stupid; and if a poor person is religious, I call him intelligent, really intelligent. Rare intelligence is needed for the poor man to become religious. When a Kabir becomes religious he shows more intelligence than Buddha himself – because it is impossible, almost impossible to become religious when you are poor. When you have not known what riches are, how can you get beyond them? One can go beyond a certain thing only when it has been experienced; it is only through experience that one surpasses and transcends. If somebody transcends without experiencing something, that simply means that he has such intelligence that he learns from others’ experiences; he need not go into all those things on his own.
Osho

It needs intelligence to be happy, and people are taught to remain unintelligent. The society does not want intelligence to flower. The society does not need intelligence; in fact it is very much afraid of intelligence. The society needs stupid people. Why? – because stupid people are manageable. Intelligent people are not necessarily obedient – they may obey, they may not obey. But the stupid person cannot disobey; he is always ready to be commanded. The stupid person needs somebody to command him, because he has no intelligence to live on his own. He wants somebody to direct him; he seeks and searches his own tyrants.
Osho

Stupidity has always the shadow of meanness. The more intelligent you are, the less mean you are. The utterly intelligent person cannot have any meanness; it is impossible. He can have only love and compassion. The stupid person has to be mean because that is the only way he thinks he can win. The intelligent person has no desire to win, the intelligent person is already victorious in his intelligence. The intelligent person is already superior in his intelligence, he has not to compete for it. The stupid person has to continuously compete. And because he is stupid, he cannot rely on his intelligence, he has to rely on something else: he becomes mean, cunning, deceptive, a hypocrite. To me, stupidity is the only sin, and everything else is just a by-product of it. And intelligence is the only virtue; everything else that we have known as virtue follows it like a shadow.
Osho

The false silence, the pseudo silence, is simply dull. You can see it. If a stupid person is sitting there – an idiot, an imbecile – you will feel a certain silence around him; it is the same silence as you can feel near a cemetery. He has a space around him which is very dull. He seems to be very indifferent to the world, not in contact at all, disconnected; he is sitting there – like a lump of mud. There is no vibration around him of any life, of any energy; there is nothing streaming around him. This is not real silence. He is simply stupid. When you come close to a Buddha, he is silent because of his intelligence, he is silent because of his awareness, he is silent, not because he has forced himself to be silent, he is silent simply because he has understood the pointlessness of being disturbed in any way. He is silent because he has understood that there is no point in being worried and there is no point in being tense. His silence is out of understanding. It is overflowing understanding. When you come near a Buddha you will have a totally different fragrance – the fragrance of consciousness.
Osho

The group is always ruled by the stupid person. The stupid cannot become intelligent, but the intelligent can relapse easily and become stupid. Have you seen any stupid person doing anything intelligent ever? But you have seen many intelligent people doing stupid actions, foolish actions. You can become any moment foolish, but it is not so easy to become any moment wise. A foolish person is very consistent — he remains foolish. He cannot sometimes be wise, it is impossible. But a wise person is not so consistent; sometimes he relapses, becomes foolish. There are foolish moments in his life. There are holidays in his life when he relaxes a little and does not bother about his wisdom. If you are tied to a person who is lower than you in evolution, then you will have to walk with that person. Of course he cannot walk with you. Hence I say I also believe in the rule, but I interpret it in a different way. The rule is perfectly true – THE GROUP ONLY GETS AS HIGH AS ITS LOWEST MEMBER. So if you want to get high, please remember – never become a member of any group. Remember to remain individuals. Then you are free to move at your own pace. Then you are totally free to move alone. In a group you are tied. And of course, stupid people tend to make groups because alone they cannot rely on themselves. They are afraid, they don’t have any intelligence. They know that alone they will be lost. They tend to make groups, crowds. So whenever a church exists, whenever a sect exists, ninety-nine percent it consists of fools. It has to be so. They decide policies of religion, politics and everything. Beware of this mobocracy and be alert.
Osho

The intelligent person does not cling to the dead past, does not carry corpses. Howsoever beautiful they have been, howsoever precious, he does not carry the corpses. He is finished with the past; it is gone, and it is gone forever. But the foolish person is traditional. He is ready to follow the priest, ready to follow any stupid politician, ready to follow any order – anybody with authority and he is ready to fall at his feet. Without intelligence there can be no happiness. Man can only be happy if he is intelligent, utterly intelligent. Meditation is a device to release your intelligence. The more meditative you become, the more intelligent you become. But remember, by intelligence I don’t mean intellectuality. Intellectuality is part of stupidity. Intelligence is a totally different phenomenon, it has nothing to do with the head. Intelligence is something that comes from your very center. It wells up in you, and with it many things start growing in you. You become happy, you become creative, you become rebellious, you become adventurous, you start loving insecurity, you start moving into the unknown. You start living dangerously, because that is the only way to live.
Osho

To be crazy, some intelligence is needed. To be just a part of the collective, no intelligence is needed – any stupid person can become a perfect citizen. In fact, the more stupid you are, the more obedient you will be, the less rebellious you will be. Always you will be ready to fall in line with any fool who comes to command. Anybody who shouts loudly, you will fall into his feet; he will become your leader. But to be an individual you need intelligence, sharp consciousness, because it is very difficult to live an individual life. Surrounded by so many stupid people, surrounded by the crowd, surrounded by the dull and the dead, it is very difficult to remain alive, throbbing, streaming. Then you are very alone.
Osho

You can also read:

Osho quotes and aphorisms

The power of stupidity

Italian stupidity

The triumph of stupidity

Some quotes about stupidity

Stultorum infinitus est numerus

Quotes against power and stupidity 1

Quotes against power and stupidity 2

Struggle against stupidity

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April fools day or all fools day, the first day of April when it is customary to play practical jokes on people, causing them to believe something that isn’t true or to go on a fruitless errand. its origin, story, curiosities and examples.

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

T.S. Eliot

Sweet April showers, do spring May flowers.
English proverb

April comes in with his hack and his bill, And sets a flower on every hill.
English proverb

An April flood carries away the frog and her brood.
English proverb

April weather, Rain and sunshine, both together.
English proverb

En avril, ne te découvre pas d’un fil.
French Proverb

Aprile, apriletto, tutti i giorni un goccetto!
Italian proverb

April macht was er will.
German proverb

Abril lluvioso hace a mayo hermoso.
Spanish proverb

April, fourth month of the Gregorian calendar year. It has 30 days. The Romans gave this month the name Aprilis, derived from aperire (“to open”), probably because it is the season when buds begin to open; it was called Eostre (Easter) month by the Anglo-Saxons. Playing tricks on the first day of April is a custom among European peoples.

On April 1st you will probably be on the look-out for any possible practical jokes. If your colleagues tell you to do something slightly unusual, you might think twice before doing it. Millions of people the world over will be in a similar position. The Indians will, however, have completed their entertainment a day earlier: their Huli festival takes place on March 31st. If you do have the misfortune to be made an April fool, then you might like to take some comfort from considering the origins of this bizarre custom.

April Fools’ Day or All Fools’ Day, the first day of April. On this day it is customary to play practical jokes on people, causing them to believe something that isn’t true or to go on a fruitless errand. Although the origin of the custom is unknown, a common theory is that it developed as part of ancient spring festivals. April Fools’ Day jokes are generally amusing but harmless. For example, someone may give a friend the telephone number of the zoo, telling her to return a call from “Mr. Fox.”

The origins of April Fools’ Day are not certain, although several theories have been proposed. Before the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1582, the New Year was celebrated between March 25 (the old date of the spring equinox) and April 1. One of the most credited hypotheses is that, as a result of the change of calendar, not everyone got used to the change and were then referred to as the “April fools”. Hence the burlesque origin of April 1.

In Europe, the festivities of the first of April became customary around the end of 1500: a few years after the adoption of the new Gregorian calendar. In the France of King Charles IX and in the Germany of the Habsburgs, the tradition gets under way and then spreads in England (in the eighteenth century) and in the other European states.

Legend has it that many French, opposed to this change or simply careless, continued to exchange gifts between March and April, celebrating the New Year as in the old days. Pranksters began to mock them, delivering them absurd or empty gifts during non-existent parties. In the empty gift you could find a card with the words poisson d’avril: April Fool’s Day, in French.

Poisson d’avril, or pesce d’Aprile in Italian, yeah, but what does fish have to do with it? There’s an explanation for that, too, and it’s that fish are easily hooked. How the victims of pranks “bite” easily to tease. It must be said, however, that sometimes it is really difficult not to fall for it: also because the imagination has no limits and the pranks do not even, in fact they can pass from the classrooms of schools, playgrounds, television and websites.

In Italy the custom of 1 April is recent: it dates back to the years between 1860 and 1880. The first city to welcome the French habit was Genoa, where the passion for April jokes landed in its lively port. The tradition was rooted first among the middle and upper classes, then took root among the rest of the population.

Therefore April 1 is recognized as a day for pranks in Germany, France, Great Britain, the United States, Canada, and elsewhere. In India, the last day of the feast of Huli, March 31, is regarded as a day for mischief. In France, an April fool’s prank is called a poisson d’Avril (April fish), and in Scotland it is an April gowk or cuckoo. In the UK, jokes and tricks can be played up until noon on 1 April. After midday it’s considered bad luck to play a trick. Anyone who forgets this and tries a joke in the afternoon becomes an ‘April Fool’ themselves.

Some newspapers, TV channels and well-known companies publish false news stories to fool people on 1 April. One of the earliest examples of this was in 1957 when a programme on the BBC, the UK’s national TV channel, broadcast a report on how spaghetti grew on trees. The film showed a family in Switzerland collecting spaghetti from trees and many people were fooled into believing it, as in the 1950s British people didn’t eat much pasta and many didn’t know how it was made!

A few years ago, for example, the famous English astronomer and radio host Patrick Moore announced instead that an exceptional alignment of Pluto and Jupiter planned for 9:47 on the morning of April 1 would have canceled the effects of Earth’s gravity, and all the inhabitants of the planet would start floating like astronauts in space!

Most British people wouldn’t fall for the spaghetti trick today, but in 2008 the BBC managed to fool their audience again with their Miracles of Evolution trailer, which appeared to show some special penguins that had regained the ability to fly. Two major UK newspapers, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mirror, published the ‘important story’ on their front pages. The gullible British swallowed it, as they say, “hook, line and sinker”.

So, what kind of jokes do people play? Well, a simple example would be telling your friend that their shoelaces are undone. Then, when they bend down to do them up, you shout, ‘April Fool!’, and they realise their shoelaces are fine. Maybe it’s not your kind of humour, but watch out, there’s always someone who will find it hilarious! In Ireland, a popular prank is to send someone on a ‘fool’s errand’.

The victim is sent to deliver a letter, supposedly asking for help. When the person receives the letter, they open it, read it and tell the poor messenger that they will have to take the letter to another person. This continues and the victim ends up taking the message to several different people until someone feels sorry for them and shows them what the letter says: ‘Send the fool to someone else.’

April Fool’s Day fans say it encourages fun and laughter, and one study found that it reduces stress and therefore could be good for your heart. Other people point out that it can have negative consequences, like confusion, worry or wasting time and resources. In France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and French-speaking areas of Canada and Switzerland, the 1 April tradition is known as the ‘April Fish’. A common joke is to try to stick a paper fish onto a victim’s back without being noticed.

The origins of the April fools joke are somewhat obscure. The first references in English literature are to be found in the seventeenth century. It would appear that there was some connection between the April fool and the first cuckoo. The victims of such jokes were referred to as “April gowks”: this is a northern dialect word which means cuckoo. The gowk, or cuckoo, was the unfortunate person who was sent on a false errand. The English even had a proverb for the occasion: “First of April, hunt the gowk. You may send a fool whither you will”.

In modern times the advent of the telephone has added a new dimension to the false errand. One April 1st back in the 1950’s a Mr. Fox arrived at work and found a message on his desk telling him to ring Primrose 2323 in order to speak to a Mr. Lion. When Mr. Fox dialled the number and asked to speak to the fictitious Mr. Lion, he was surprised to find that he had rung London Zoo. A spokesperson for Dublin Zoo said staff had lost their sense of humour’ after they received more than 100,000 calls asking for invented names such as Mr C Lyons, Anna Conda and G Raffe! The callers were victims of a phone hoax, who contacted the zoo after receiving a text message encouraging them to make the call.

The fact that April is the month in which such pranks are played undoubtedly has something to do with the change of season. The first of April marks the arrival of spring: this causes many people to indulge in folly, romantic or otherwise. It is perhaps not surprising that April 1st has seen practical jokes of a romantic nature. William Congreve’s play, “The Old Bachelor” (1693), tells the story of “one of love’s april fools.” Heartwell, an aging woman-hater”, falls in love with Silvia, the mistress of another. The hapless” Heartwell is fooled into marrying her and thus becomes the laughing-stock of all his friends.

A charming classical reference to April fools can be found in the Reverend Brewer’s “Dictionary of Phrase and Fable”, originally published in 1870. Brewer tells the mythological tale” of Proserpina and Pluto, god of the underworld. Legend has it that Proserpina was picking daffodils in the Elysian meadows one April morning when Pluto suddenly appeared. He promptly carried her off to the underworld where he made her his queen. Proserpina’s mother, Ceres (the goddess of core, appropriately enough) heard her daughter’s cries and went in search of her echo. But her search was in vain: Ceres went on “a fool’s errand”.

Brewer examines other explanations of the origins of April fools. There is one theory that it may originate from the mockery trial of Jesus in which he was sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate: there is certainly a connection with April as the trial occurred a few days before Easter. I am happy to say that Brewer rejects this theory as unconvincing.

On April Fool’s Day 1998, the American hamburger chain Burger King announced that it had created a left-handed hamburger. The advert for the ‘new product’ explained that all the ingredients had been rotated 180 degrees so that it was more comfortable for left-handed people to pick up and eat. The following day, Burger King admitted that this advertisement had been a hoax, but said that thousands of customers had gone to restaurants across the USA asking for a left-handed burger.

Whatever the origins of April fools, its character has undoubtedly changed in modern times. In the first place, it has lost its romantic element. Nowadays amorous pranks are played on February 14th when lovers, prospective lovers and mere saboteurs send anonymous Valentine cards. Secondly, people are becoming less susceptible to practical jokes. As early as 1842 a certain General Thompson warned of the dangers of mass literacy: “It will be difficult to make April fools of a whole people that can read and write.”

It is ironic that the age of telecommunications, which has increased the possibilities of practical jokes, has also increased people’s insensitivity to them. After the great success of the spaghetti documentary there followed a spate of television and newspaper hoaxes in Britain on April 1st.

Even the British got the hang of it after a while: last year’s April 1st documentary, in which the B.B.C. announced that St. Paul’s Cathedral was to be dismantled brick by brick and moved to the countryside, was something of a flop. If you want a practical joke to work in the 1980’s, it is better to organise it on another day.

As we have seen, in France, as in Italy, the expression poisson d’avril is used. In English-speaking countries, such as the United Kingdom and America, instead, it is called April fool’s day (“The Day of the April fool”), where the term “fool” reminds the Fool, the jester of the medieval courts, thus emphasizing the playful connotation of the party. Finally, in Germany, Aprilscherz is more simply the “April Prank”.

In the Highlands of Scotland the April Fool lasts two days, in the second, the Taily Day, you enjoy to attach on the back of the unlucky (fools or gawls) a sign with the words “Kick me!” (Give me a kick). In Portugal, the days dedicated to pranks are Sunday and Monday before Lent, in which whole packs of flour are thrown on friends! India also has its April Fools’ Day. However, it falls a day earlier, on March 31. On that date we celebrate the Huli festival to celebrate spring and make fun of everyone.

But some people have always had a tendency to suspect any information that is given on April 1st. In 1964, for example, there was a boat strike in Venice on the day in question. A group of perceptive Dutch tourists were at first amused and later angered by this news. Yes, it was a very funny joke, but there was no need to keep it up the whole day. In fact the strike was genuine. It was a cruel twist of fate that of all the days of the year in which the Venetians could organise a boat strike, they chose April fools day.

Everywhere, in Europe and around the world, April 1 is still celebrated a little Carnival! What’s more in the era of ‘fake news’ it’s often hard on a normal day of the year to work out when we’re being tricked into believing something that isn’t true, but on April Fool’s Day you need to be even more alert. No one knows exactly how the tradition started, but there are plenty of people who enjoy this light-hearted day and are happy to keep the tradition alive.

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Fashion and style trends, an article that describes a short history of fashion and the different style trends through the centuries with quotes and references.

Fashion is always changing mainly because culture, research and stupidity never stand still.
Carl William Brown

Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.
Oscar Wilde

We are but a day in this world, and in that day the fashion is changed a thousand times: all seek liberty, yet all deprive themselves of it.
Dante Alighieri

Fashions fade, style is eternal.
Yves Saint Laurent

In our culture, futility plays the role of transgression and fashion is condemned for having within it the force of the pure sign which signifies nothing.
Jean Baudrillard

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
George Santayana

Fashion postulates an achrony, a time which does not exist; here the past is shameful and the present is constantly “eaten up” by the Fashion being heralded.
Roland Barthes

What is called fashion is the tradition of the moment. All tradition carries with it a certain necessity for people to put themselves on a level with it.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I don’t believe in fashion. I believe in costume. Life is too short to be same person every day.
Stephanie Perkins

Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.
Coco Chanel

Most fashionable ladies are as diamonds because they are more costly than useful.
William Scott Downey

Change of fashions is the tax which industry imposes on the vanity of the rich.
Nicolas Chamfort

We must never confuse elegance with snobbery.
Yves Saint Laurent

Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
E. H. Chapin

No fashion is ever a success unless it is used as a form of seduction.
Christian Dior

Fashion is predicated on the fear that the naked body, divested of signs, is incapable of authority.
Christian Thorne

The history of fashion and costume, as means of self-expression, has been with us since humans began to clothe themselves. The history of fashion dates back to the Egyptians, whose burial sites have provided historians with plenty of well-preserved costumes, jewels, artifacts and tools. However, the Renaissance is the time some historians identify with the beginning of the history of fashion. As people grew more self-aware, clothing, and in particular fashionable clothing, became of increasing importance during the Renaissance.

Fashion, once purely a pastime of the rich, also became a preoccupation of the prosperous middle class. During the Middle Ages clothes had become distinct from country to country, but the Renaissance had a more unifying effect on fashion. Clothes were made by tailors to match a customer’s requests and it was common for a client to pay several visits to a tailor for just a single item of clothing.

Tailors began to form business networks of closely related trades in specific regions of towns and cities. In London, the area of London Bridge housed the first haberdashers. A tailor’s shop, work rooms and home were all located on one site. Travelling tailors serviced country folk who did not have access to urban countries.

Fashion, clothing that is in style at a particular time. The concept of fashion implies a process of style change, because fashions in dress, as well as in furniture and other objects, have taken very different forms at different times in history. Thus, when English playwright William Shakespeare observed in the 16th century that “the fashion wears out more apparel than the man,” he meant that clothing becomes unfashionable long before it has worn out.

Back in Shakespeare’s day, only upper-class people dressed fashionably; the mass of the rural peasantry wore simple clothing that hardly changed over many generations. Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, fashions have changed rapidly. We would look strange indeed if we wore the styles our great-grandparents wore. And most people, at least in the West, follow fashion to some extent, because fashion refers to much more than the haute couture, the exclusive and expensive clothing produced by leading designers.

Even schoolchildren are aware that fashions exist, and change, in running shoes. Nevertheless, we do tend to distinguish, however imprecisely, between basic clothing, such as blue jeans, parkas, and T-shirts, and the latest trendy fashions created by fashion designers. This article follows fashion in the West from its beginnings in Europe to the present. For more information on everyday clothing around the world.

Fashion reflects the society of which it is a part. It has been influenced by wars, conquests, laws, religion, and the arts. Individual personalities have also had an impact on fashion. Royalty and heads of state have set fashion, and in the 20th century media stars have emerged as leaders of fashion. French writer Anatole France said that if he could come back to Earth 100 years after his death and have only one thing to read, he would choose a fashion magazine because that would show him the way people lived.

Fashion also has its critics, who have at times denounced fashion as irrational, frivolous, tyrannical, and immoral. Why should pink be in fashion one season and gray the next season? Why do people follow fashion like sheep when they have enough clothes already? A common accusation is that fashion designers accelerate fashion change to create new business. Yet no new fashion succeeds until people are ready to accept it. The final decision about what to buy, or whether to buy anything at all, belongs to the consumer. Ultimately, fashions change because many people like new and different styles.

In the 1980s Armani and other Italian designers such as Versace, Valentino, Trussardi and Gucci profoundly influenced the cut of men’s suits, fashion, style trends and accessories in general. The Italian look featured a looser, more comfortable fit, using softer materials in neutral colors such as camel. Over the course of the decade, shoulders became broader. Padded shoulders became standard for women as well as for men, a style known as the power look or the executive look. By the 1990s suits had slimmed down again, but they retained the easy elegance that distinguished the Italian look from the stiffer look of East Coast retailers in the United States, such as Brooks Brothers.

Although the suit remained the basic garment of the male wardrobe, the trend was toward more casual dressing. This trend even found its way into the workplace with the introduction of casual Fridays by many companies. In some companies the dressing down of casual Fridays now extends throughout the week. The business suit shows few signs of disappearing in western Europe and Japan, however.

As dress has become less formal, men have become increasingly concerned with style, color, and patterns in their clothing. Participation in sports has also influenced men’s clothing. To begin with, it has increased the size of the male wardrobe: golf, tennis, and skiing, for example, require specific apparel. Beyond this, a growing emphasis has been placed on functionalism in clothing. Athletic shoes, for example, are worn on the street, as well as during athletic activities. Today many top fashion designers have casual sportswear lines, for example the Emporio Armani line by Armani, that include casual items such as sweatshirts.

The most formal attire that most men ever wear is the dinner jacket or tuxedo, black trousers, a tie and cummerbund of black satin or grosgrain, and a white shirt. A white jacket is substituted during the summer. The tuxedo underwent stylistic changes in the 1960s, when designers began to produce dinner jackets in colors other than black or white. These jackets were worn with ruffled shirts and wide butterfly ties. This flamboyance in eveningwear tended to disappear in the 1990s, although teenagers still often rented tuxedos for their formal school dances.

Today, celebrity is more significant than social status in establishing fashion leadership. Musicians, actors, sports figures, and other performers frequently launch or popularize new fashions. The role of fashion leader has also been assumed by the manufacturers of men’s apparel, who through advertising and public relations techniques are able to acquaint millions of men with a new fashion idea in a matter of weeks.

In the past, ordinary people wore the same styles for years. Teenagers generally dressed the same as adults. In modern times, though, fashions began to change at least every year. Today, new styles appear every few months! So why do fashions change? Social and economic factors have played a big part. Teen fashion began to develop after the Second World War. In the 1950s teenagers and twenty-somethings had money and leisure time. They could choose and buy their own clothes. As consumers, they had a big influence on fashion trends.

Favourite styles in the 1950s included tight trousers and skinny ties for the boys. Girls often wore an over-sized jumper/sweater, or cardigan, and a ‘: long tweed skirt to match, or loose rolled-up jeans. Synthetic, easy-care, man-made fabrics like polyester were popular. Music has also been a major influence on youth fashion since the birth of rock’n’roll in 1951. In the 1960s the Beatles popularised Beatle boots, tight-fitting, ankle-high boots with a pointed toe. Rock groups made the hippie look fashionable. Young men grew their hair long. Girls wore long, loose-fitting ankle-length dresses and maxi skirts, headscarves and long necklaces. They dressed in vintage clothes and copied traditional folk styles.

In the 1970s and 80s, celebrities like David Bowie became fashion icons. Bowie was the symbol of the glam-rock era. He wore shocking clothes, make-up and hairstyles. Artists designed and made clothes especially for him, so they always fitted him perfectly. He was a pioneer of androgynous fashions, styles that both boys and girls can wear.

In the 1990s, rock groups made grunge style popular: ripped jeans, flannel shirts, second-hand clothes from a charity shop, and baseball caps worn backwards. Today, teenage styles have become much more varied. Casual clothes are the norm. But style is more about individual expression than being a slave to fashion. The most important thing is to take a trend and make it personal with creative twists.

In the late 1990s the fashion system had become increasingly fragmented into many small style tribes. Designers no longer found it possible to promote a single new look every sea-son. By the end of the 20th century, several trends were identifiable. Retro and ethnic styles remained important. Top European designers such as John Galliano found inspiration in the long ago and far away.

Styles that played with society’s assumptions about sex and gender also connected with young fashion trendsetters. Many professionals in the fashion industry believed that the use of high-tech materials would become increasingly significant in the early 2000s. Teflon coatings on fabrics, for example, resist stains. Techno styles use industrial materials, and they also express a functional aesthetic.

At the turn of the 21st century, experts maintained that fashion’s future was decidedly not futuristic and that there would be no shiny silver uniforms, as imagined by futuristic movies of previous decades. Rather, fashion continued to divide into many concurrent styles, with each consumer free to choose his or her own style from within the available array. Individuality coexisted with a desire to associate oneself with particular trendsetters among the fashion-conscious or among fashion designers.

Italy is one of the leading countries in fashion design, alongside France, the United States and the United Kingdom. Fashion has always been an important part of the country’s cultural life and society, and Italians are well known for their attention to dress; la “bella figura”, or “good appearance”, retains its traditional importance. Italian fashion is dominated by Milan, Rome, and to a lesser extent, Florence, with the former two being included in the top 30 fashion capitals of the world. Nonetheless, there are numerous other cities which play an important role in Italian fashion.

Italian fashion is linked to the most generalized concept of “Made in Italy“, a merchandise brand expressing excellence of creativity and craftsmanship. Italian luxury goods are renowned for the quality of the textiles and the elegance and refinement of their construction. Many French, British and American high-top luxury brands (such as Chanel, Dior, Balmain and the main line of Ralph Lauren) also rely on Italian craft factories, located in highly specialized areas in the metropolitan area of Naples and in the centre-north of Italy (Tuscany, Marche, Veneto and Piedmont), to produce parts of their apparel and accessories.

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Quotes on war, aphorisms, quotations, ideas, and famous sentences by great authors and writers about the stupidity of every war and the cruelty of armies and soldiers.

Dear William, how is it that there are so many wars in this stupid world? Dear Brown, it’s because peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men.
Carl William Brown via William Shakespeare

Iustum est bellum, quibus necessarium. – War is right for those for whom it is needed -.
Tito Livio, Ab urbe condita, I sec.

The aim of war is not to kill the enemy, but to destroy his will to fight.
General Sir Frank Kitson

War is what happens when language fails.
Margaret Atwood

All war is a crime against humanity.
Leo Tolstoy

Wars serve no purpose other than to fill cemeteries, and there are no enemies in cemeteries.
Carl William Brown

Before all else, be armed.
Niccolo Machiavelli

The essence of the Navy, its very soul, is that it is always ready for war.
Admiral Sir John Fisher

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac… All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting… War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it… Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
George Orwell

The Ayatollah is no longer here; he has finally been sent to the afterlife; but he will remain a great memory in the history of stupidity.
Carl William Brown

The enemy is not beaten until he thinks he is.
Field Marshal Sir Claude John Eyre Auchinleck

If my soldiers started thinking, no one would stay in my ranks.
Frederick II King of Prussia

If you live long enough, you’ll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone de Beauvoir

Frederick II King of Prussia once said: “If my soldiers started thinking, no one would stay in my ranks.”. That’s why a dictator who favors war is without brain just as well, capable of nothing, but only of a good action, that of dying.
Carl William Brown

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.
Bertrand Russell

How wonderful it would be if the human race, like some animal species, practiced mass suicide in a finally serious and convincing way, not as it has done up to now playing with wars.
Carl William Brown

When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty.
Arthur Ponsonby

War is fear cloaked in courage.
William Westmoreland

War: a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don’t massacre each other.
Paul Valery

All’s fair in love and war.
Francis Edward Smedley

War cemeteries. The dead in war are nothing but advertisements to enrich the funereal marketing of world stupidity.
Carl William Brown

War is what happens when language fails.
Margaret Atwood

If the frontline people do count, you couldn’t prove it by examining the reward systems in most organizations.
Karl Albrecht

War on nations changes maps. War on poverty maps change.
Muhammad Ali

You don’t have to fight too often with an enemy, otherwise you will teach them all your warfare.
Napoleon I

The most important wars in history were the result of trivial causes. Those who know when they have had enough are wealthy.
Fred Van Amburgh

A coward is one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
Ambrose Bierce

O can’t you see, brother – Death’s a congested road for fighters now, and hero a cheap label.
C. D. Andrews

In war, moral considerations count for three quarters, the ratio of real forces only for the other quarter.
Napoleon I

In the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.
Aristotle

From the happy expression on their faces you might have supposed that they welcomed the war. I have met with men who loved stamps, and stones, and snakes, but I could not imagine any man loving war.
Margot Asquith

A skillful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.
Samuel Butler

Necessity can set me helpless on my back, but she cannot keep me there; nor can four walls limit my vision.
Margaret Fairless Barber

The destructive forces of humanity are directly proportional to the scientific, technological, sociological, economic, political and military capabilities of its imbecility.
Carl William Brown

The cannon thunders… limbs fly in all directions… one can hear the groans of victims and the howling of those performing the sacrifice… it’s humanity in search of happiness.
Charles Baudelaire

It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only twenty seconds of war to destroy him.
Baudouin I

A wage hike is very hard to take away, but bonuses and profit-sharing can disappear very quickly in hard times… More people are realizing that bonuses look like raises, but really aren’t.
Al Bauman

If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits.
Ruth Benedict

Any soldier who fights for money and for a dictator is a waste of society, an object without a brain, only capable of a good action, that of dying.
Carl William Brown

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.
Walter Benjamin

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.
George Orwell

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.
Tony Benn

The inevitableness, the idealism, and the blessing of war, as an indispensable and stimulating law of development, must be repeatedly emphasized.
Friedrich Von Bernhardi

If we fight a war and win it with H-bombs, what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for, but the methods we used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who ruthlessly killed every last inhabitant of Persia.
Hans A. Bethe

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.
Otto Von Bismarck

Hell and damnation, life is such fun with a ragged greatcoat and a Jerry gun!
Alexander Blok

Neither situations nor people can be altered by the interference of an outsider. If they are to be altered, that alteration must come from within.
Phyllis Bottome

Let me have war, say I: it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it’s spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men.
William Shakespeare

When a war breaks out, everyone hopes it will end soon, the only ones who want it to continue as long as possible are those who died first.
Carl William Brown

For cowards the road of desertion should be left open; they will carry over to the enemy nothing, but their fears.
John Christian Bovee

Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them must share in the guilt for the dead.
Omar Nelson Bradley

War is like love, it always finds a way.
Bertolt Brecht

To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything. Between what I do recognize and what I do not recognize, there stands myself. And what I do not recognize, I shall continue not to recognize.
Andre Breton

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
Buddha

How many feasible projects have miscarried through despondency, and been strangled in their birth by a cowardly imagination.
Jeremy Collier

Faint heart never won fair lady.
Miguel De Cervantes

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.
Winston Churchill

The sinews of war, a limitless supply of money.
Marcus T. Cicero

In war, more than anywhere else in the world, things happen differently from what we had expected, and look differently when near from what they did at a distance.
Karl Von Clausewitz

It was once said that to have peace one had to prepare for war, but I prefer to argue that to have peace one must exterminate war.
Carl William Brown

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of politics by other means.
Karl Von Clausewitz

It is far easier to make war than to make peace.
Georges Clemenceau

A ‘just war’ is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.
Alexander Cockburn

That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.
Charles Caleb Colton

He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own.
Confucius

To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.
Confucius

Blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds, and though a late, a sure reward succeeds.
William Congreve

When war rages in order to obtain peace you have to fight.
Carl William Brown

I would often be a coward, but for the shame of it.
Ralph Connor

Perhaps the reward of the spirit who tries is not the goal but the exercise.
E. V. Cooke

The giving of blood is imbued with the psychology of peace, for it leaves its humanitarian mark in the hearts of those who give for their fellowman.
Red Cross Courier

That strange feeling we had in the war. Have you found anything in your lives since to equal it in strength? A sort of splendid carelessness it was, holding us together.
Noel Coward

Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.
Bruce Crampton

War eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs.
George Orwell

Vice is its own reward. It is virtue which, if it is to be marketed with consumer appeal, must carry Green Shield stamps.
Quentin Crisp

The idea of thanking staff should mean giving them something that they would never buy for themselves.
Jayne Crook

No country has suffered so much from the ruins of war while being at peace as the American.
Edward Dahlberg

War is the trade of Kings.
John Dryden

War, he sang, is toil and trouble; Honor but an empty bubble.
John Dryden

Everyone in our culture wants to win a prize. Perhaps that is the grand lesson we have taken with us from kindergarten in the age of perversions of Dewey-style education: everyone gets a ribbon, and praise becomes a meaningless narcotic to soothe egoistic distemper.
Gerald Early

America is addicted to wars of distraction.
Barbara Ehrenreich

In past times during the various battles mostly soldiers died, nowadays progress has meant that in times of war mostly civilians die.
Carl William Brown

Covetousness like jealousy, when it has taken root, never leaves a person but with their life. Cowardice is the dread of what will happen.
Epictetus

I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein

Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow — perhaps it all will.
Albert Einstein

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted.
T. S. Eliot

Although I am opposed to war, as we live in a society of bitter conflicts and bitter competition, it is obvious that to change the state of things a mythical struggle must be undertaken, first of all against stupidity.
Carl William Brown

I feel sure that coups d’etat would go much better if there were seats, boxes, and stalls so that one could see what was happening and not miss anything.
Edmond and Jules De Goncourt

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
Desiderius Erasmus

A coward turns away, but a brave man’s choice is danger.
Euripides

Moderation in war is imbecility.
Admiral John Fisher

We would be cowards, if we had courage enough.
Thomas Fuller

Cowards can never be moral.
Mahatma Gandhi

Fear has its use but cowardice has none.
Mahatma Gandhi

It is open to a war resister to judge between the combatants and wish success to the one who has justice on his side. By so judging he is more likely to bring peace between the two than by remaining a mere spectator.
Mahatma Gandhi

Stupidity and aggression, selfishness and greed lead to war, but people don’t seem to worry too much, at least until the grenades fall on their feet.
Carl William Brown

Morality is contraband in war.
Mahatma Gandhi

Cowards are cruel, but the brave love mercy and delight to save.
John Gay

Unless they are immediate victims, the majority of mankind behaves as if war was an act of God which could not be prevented; or they behave as if war elsewhere was none of their business. It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.
Martha Gellhorn

How many joys are crushed under foot because people look up at the sky and disregard what is at their feet?
Catharina Elisabetha Goethe

The coward threatens when he is safe.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree I planted.
George Noel Gordon

A reward cannot be valued if it is not understood.
Phillip C. Grant

The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.
Robert Graves

War is hell and all that, but it has a good deal to recommend it. It wipes out all the small nuisances of peace time.
Ian Hay

Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.
William Hazlitt

War is stupidity, just as stupidity is the existential war of man.
Carl William Brown

Frankly, I’d like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.
Joseph Heller

Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.
Joseph Heller

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.
Ernest Hemingway

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow men.
Napoleon Hill

Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues.
Thomas Hobbes

When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.
Eric Hoffer

I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.
Abbie Hoffman

Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.
Herbert Clark Hoover

Here dead lie we because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; but young men think it is, and we were young.
A. E. Housman

No man who does a good deed should expect gratitude. The reward of a good deed is in having done it.
Elbert Hubbard

What we believe is more important than our material existence, therefore warfare is a legitimate extension of values.
Edward Johnson

War seems to be one of the most salutary phenomena for the culture of human nature; and it is not without regret that I see it disappearing more and more from the scene.
Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.
Aldous Huxley

It is better to be the widow of a hero than the wife of a coward.
Dolores Ibarruri

The natural principle of war is to do the most harm to our enemy with the least harm to ourselves; and this of course is to be effected by stratagem.
Washington Irving

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.
Thomas Jefferson

In spite of all of the training you get and the precautions you take to keep yourself alive, it’s largely a matter of luck that decides whether or not you get killed.
James Jones

It is the coward who fawns upon those above him. It is the coward who is insolent whenever he dares be so.
Junius

Criminals and law enforcement agencies, a fratricidal struggle, a civil war between rival gangs.
Carl William Brown

The best-educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed.
Helen Keller

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind. War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
John F. Kennedy

Oh, the brave Music of a distant drum!
Omar Khayyam

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.
Martin Luther King Jr.

And that is called paying the Dane-geld; but we’ve proved it again and again, that if once you have paid him the Dane-geld you never get rid of the Dane.
Rudyard Kipling

If any question why we died, tell them, because our fathers lied.
Rudyard Kipling

A coward is a hero with a wife, kids, and a mortgage.
Marvin Kitman

Dishonesty, cowardice and duplicity are never impulsive.
George A. Knight

The most persistent sound which reverberates through man’s history is the beating of war drums.
Arthur Koestler

Where do all the women who have watched so carefully over the lives of their beloved ones get the heroism to send them to face the cannon?
KaThe Kollwitz

How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.
Karl Kraus

Sure war is a bad thing, but at least it helps bring down unemployment.
Carl William Brown

War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.
Karl Kraus

The more prosperous and settled a nation, the more readily it tends to think of war as a regrettable accident; to nations less fortunate the chance of war presents itself as a possible bountiful friend.
Lewis H. Lapham

Cowards cannot see that their greatest safety lies in dauntless courage.
Johann Kaspar Lavater

The war is dreadful. It is the business of the artist to follow it home to the heart of the individual fighters — not to talk in armies and nations and numbers — but to track it home.
D. H. Lawrence

Of course in war all madnesses come out in a man. That is the fault of war not of a man or a nation.
Frieda Lawrence

I have been up to see the Congress and they do not seem to be able to do anything except to eat peanuts and chew tobacco, while my army is starving.
Robert E. Lee

Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war –for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I’d say we deserve ours more.
John Lennon

I sincerely wish war was a pleasanter and easier business than it is, but it does not admit of holidays.
Abraham Lincoln

Let him not boast who puts his armor on as he who puts it off, the battle done.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I have known war as few men now living know it. Its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.
Douglas Macarthur

In a country where the military earns a lot of money, the only thing to do to amortize the expense is to generate a war.
Carl William Brown

I see that old flagpole still stands. Have your troops hoist the colors to its peak, and let no enemy ever haul them down.
Douglas Macarthur

In war, there is no substitute for victory.
Douglas Macarthur

There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.
Niccolo Machiavelli

The Oscars demonstrate the will of the people to control and judge those they have elected to stand above them (much, perhaps, as in bygone days, an election celebrated the same).
David Mamet

Wars are carried out by large organizations; Peace is brought one by one.
Rachel Manor

Blunders are an inescapable feature of war, because choice in military affairs lies generally between the bad and the worse.
Allan Massie

Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself.
Francis Meehan

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
H. L. Mencken

God always provides what we need, but we must be ready to open our eyes and see it.
Midrash

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
Henry Miller

I’m a hero with coward’s legs.
Spike Milligan

War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
Charles Edward Montague

Cowardice is the mother of cruelty.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

The only war I can conceive is that against stupidity. But in this area the human race always prefers to be at peace with itself and its deadliest enemies.
Carl William Brown

It is the part of cowardliness, and not of virtue, to seek to squat itself in some hollow lurking hole, or to hide herself under some massive tomb, thereby to shun the strokes of fortune.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.
Lewis Mumford

In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.
Jose Narosky

The only cowards are sinners; fighting the fight is all.
John G. Neihardt

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Our rewards in life will always be in direct ratio to our service.
Earl Nightingale

Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.
Ronald Reagan

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
George Orwell

There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.
George Orwell

What are we hoping to get out of it, what’s it all in aid of — is it really just for the sake of a gloved hand waving at you from a golden coach?
John Osborne

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Wilfred Owen

To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.
Thomas Paine

The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war.
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

Suppose they gave a war, and no one came?
Leslie Parrish-Bach

He that does good for good’s sake seeks neither paradise nor reward, but he is sure of both in the end.
William Penn

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.
Edgar Allan Poe

The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.
Ezra Pound

Wars are made to make debt.
Ezra Pound

There is no reason for war that reasonable men can’t settle. Clouds and thunder don’t always result in rain. A small cloud can hide the sun and the moon.
Armenian Proverb

War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.
French Proverb

To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.
German Proverb

It is better to be a coward for a minute than dead for the rest of your life.
Irish Proverb

We won the war, but we lost peace.
Serbian Proverb

Cowards falter, but danger is often overcome by those who nobly dare.
Queen Elizabeth II

War begets quiet, quiet idleness, idleness disorder, disorder ruin; likewise ruin order, order virtue, virtue glory, and good fortune.
Sir Walter Raleigh

By now the cold war has turned into a hot peace, and people have already begun to sweat a lot.
Carl William Brown

There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
Ayn Rand

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
Jeannette Rankin

The reward of great men is that, long after they have died, one is not quite sure that they are dead.
Jules Renard

Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It’s to see my dividends coming in.
John D. Rockefeller

I cannot believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war and no one will win the next.
Eleanor Roosevelt

More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

War is a contagion.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Open-mindedness should not be fostered because, as Scripture teaches, Truth is great and will prevail, nor because, as Milton suggests, Truth will always win in a free and open encounter. It should be fostered for its own sake.
Richard Rorty

A cowardly cur barks more fiercely than it bites.
Quintus Curtius Rufus

War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
George Santayana

Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.
William T. Sherman

If it were not for the war, this war would suit me down to the ground.
Dorothy L. Sayers

God’s delays are not God’s denials.
Robert H. Schuller

When the adulation of life is gone, the coward sneaks to his death, but the brave live on.
George Sewell

Cowards die a thousand deaths. The valiant taste of death but once.
William Shakespeare

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.
William Shakespeare

For the humorist, good is evil, war is peace, life is death.
Carl William Brown

Cry “havoc!” and let loose the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial.
William Shakespeare

We go to gain a little patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name.
William Shakespeare

In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine.
George Bernard Shaw

Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.
George Bernard Shaw

War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, The lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

My valor is certainly going, it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out as it were, at the palms of my hands!
Richard Brinsley Sheridan

War – what a waste of time. It’s all about great achievements for the very few but hideous losses for the very many.
Author Unknown

Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.
Sun Tzu

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
Sun Tzu

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
Sun Tzu

You can ensure the success of your attacks if you only attack places that are undefended. You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked. Therefore, that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.
Sun Tzu

It is better to be killed than frightened to death.
Robert S. Surtees

Greater even than the pious man is he who eats that which is the fruit of his own toil; for scripture declares him twice-blessed.
The Talmud

I have a deep sympathy with war; it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.
Henry David Thoreau

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
Henry David Thoreau

There are two things which will always be very difficult for a democratic nation: to start a war and to end it.
Alexis De Tocqueville

Not in rewards, but in the strength to strive, the blessing lies.
J. T. Towbridge

Except a person be part coward, it is not a compliment to say he is brave.
Mark Twain

Except a person be part coward, it is not a compliment to say he is brave.
Mark Twain

It is better to deserve an honor and not receive it, than to receive one and not deserve it!
Mark Twain

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession, but carrying a banner.
Mark Twain

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.
Mark Twain

A coward gets scared and quits. A hero gets scared, but still goes on.
Author Unknown

As cowardly as a coward is, it is not safe to call a coward a coward.
Author Unknown

All wars are wars of power, which is why being against power and stupidity it is obvious that it is also against the war for power, but not against the revolt against power and its atrocities.
Carl William Brown

Companies that give excellent service reward employees for providing it.
Author Unknown

Let the motive be in the deed and not in the event. Be not one whose motive for action is the hope of reward.
Author Unknown

The cowards never started – and the weak died along the way.
Author Unknown

To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.
John Updike

To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.
Peter Ustinov

Most people grow old within a small circle of ideas, which they have not discovered for themselves. There are perhaps less wrong-minded people than thoughtless.
Marquis De Vauvenargues

It is forbidden to kill – and thus, all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers, and with the background of trumpets playing.
Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire

One of the chief misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowardly.
Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire

What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It’s a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.
Booker T. Washington

A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
Simone Weil

What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.
Simone Weil

Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men.
Bishop Westcott

With every deed you are sowing a seed, though the harvest you may not see.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
Oscar Wilde

All men would be cowards if they durst.
John Wilmot

My mind is my biggest asset.
Tiger Woods

If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or “our” country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will not share.
Virginia Woolf

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.
Virginia Woolf

I think it better that in times like these a poet’s mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.
William Butler Yeats

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News and events

Short news about Italy, with an explanatory video on all 20 Italian Regions Stereotypes, from the book Italy in brief by Carl William Brown, a collection of quotes, news and thoughts about Italy 

The name Italy comes from the word Italia, meaning “calf land,” perhaps because the bull was a symbol of the Southern Italian tribes.
Historical News

The capital of Italy is Rome (also known as the Eternal City) and is almost 3,000 years old. It has been the capital since 1871 and is home to the Dome of St. Peter’s, the Sistine Chapel, the Coliseum, and the famous Trevi Fountain.
Historical News

By the year 2000 B.C., Italic tribes (Oscans, Umbrians, Latins) had established themselves in Italy. They were followed by the Etruscans in 800 B.C. and the Greeks, who established colonies known as Magna Graeca in southern Italy (present-day Apulia). Rome was founded in 753 B.C., and soon thereafter the Romans began conquering the peninsula.
Historical News

At its height in A.D. 117, the Roman Empire stretched from Portugal in the West to Syria in the east, and from Britain in the North to the North African deserts across the Mediterranean. It covered 2.3 million miles (two-thirds the size of the U.S.) and had a population of 120 million people. During the Middle Ages, Rome had perhaps no more than 13,000 residents.
Historical News

When McDonald’s opened in 1986 in Rome, food purists outside the restaurant gave away free spaghetti to remind people of their culinary heritage.
Italians created parmesan, provolone, mozzarella, and many other cheeses. Parmesan cheese originated in the area around
Historical News

Vatican City is the only nation in the world that can lock its own gates at night. It has its own phone company, radio, T.V. stations, money, and stamps. It even has its own army, the historic Swiss Guard.
Historical News

Parma, Italy. Italians also created many other cheeses, including gorgonzola, mozzarella, provolone, and ricotta. No one knows when the pizza was invented, but the people of Naples made it popular.
Historical News

The European Union law states that we have the free movement of companies, they have freedom of establishment. This is in fact the entire point of the whole Single Market program. One company, based anywhere inside the EU, can then sell to all 27 other countries in the EU without needing to have a permanent establishment in each of those 27. And believe me the EU isn’t going to allow someone to over turn that very basic foundation of the entire project. It’s just not going to happen. So I am perfectly free to buy any goods that are legally sold throughout Europe, provided that they can be delivered, even though they are not legal in Italy, even because in Italy only stupidity is legal.
Carl William Brown

Italian is a Romance language descended from Vulgar Latin, just like Spanish, French, Portuguese and Romanian, the dialect spoken by the people living during the last years of the Roman Empire. Before the Romans came, people spoke their own languages, and the mixture of these original tongues with Latin produced many of the languages and dialects that are still in use today. Italian has more Latin words than any other Romance languages, and its grammatical system remains similar to Latin. Latin is still the official language of the Vatican City in Rome. In the 1930s and 40s, Italian fascist Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) tried to eliminate foreign words from Italian. In soccer, “goal” became “meta” and Donald Duck became “Paperino.” Mickey Mouse became “Topolino” and Goofy became “Pippo.” While the ban was not permanent, the Italian names remain common.
Historical News

The world’s first operas were composed in Italy at the end of the sixteenth century. Opera reached the height of popularity in the nineteenth century, when the works of Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868), Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), and Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) became hugely popular. The late
tenor Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007) is a national celebrity, and

Claudio Monteverdi (c. 1567-1643) is regarded as the father of the modern opera.
Historical News

Venice, Italy, is one of the world’s most beautiful and unusual cities. It was founded over 1,400 years ago on a collection of muddy islands in a wide and shallow lagoon. It has been sinking into the mud for centuries and is plagued by floods.
Italy was one of the founders of the EU and is a member of the Group of Eight (G8), a forum for eight of the world’s most powerful nations.
Historical News

In Italy there are about 60 million people and we know how high is the percentage of morons on national soil. However, in China there are about 1.4 billion people and in India almost 1.3 billion. Therefore I wonder then, if more or less all the world is a small village, with how many morons should we have to come to terms on the territory of this stupid planet. It’s the same the world over, or the world is the same wherever you go!
Carl William Brown

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was an Italian-born scientist. When he argued that the Earth revolved around the Sun, the Catholic Church imprisoned Galileo in his own house. The Church issued a formal apology in 1992.
Historical News

A part of northern Italy called Val Camonica contains about 350,000 petroglyphs that were created nearly 10,000 years ago. Brescia is a famous town at 75 km from there, it is very popular for Beretta arms industry, the oldest in the world, the Garda Lake and also because Carl William Brown was born there.
Historical News

Before the Romans came, people spoke their own languages, and the mixture of these original tongues with Latin produced many of the languages and dialects that are still in use today. If you know one of the Romance languages, you can often understand bits of another. Just as members of the same family can look similar but have totally different characters. You find the same contradictions in the dialects (regional or local language differences) in Italy and in other countries. If you visit Italy, you’ll hear various accents and dialects as you travel the country. Despite the number of dialects, you may be surprised to discover that everybody understands your Italian and you understand theirs. (Italians don’t normally speak in their dialect with foreigners.)
Linguistic News

About 70% of our English words come from Latin. This alone make Latin the most important language to influence English. For example, the word, promise, comes from “pro-mitto,” meaning to send before. Here are some more examples: word = verbum; canine = canis; college =collegium. I think you get the picture. Also Latin has influenced our grammar. For example, the distinction between “I” and “me” is based on cases. I equals nominative case in Latin and me equals dative, ablative and accusative cases. Even little things like the improper use of split infinitives come from Latin, since in Latin infinitives cannot be split. For example, to love is amare (one word) in Latin. So, in short, Latin continues to play a huge role.
Linguistic News

Italian is the official language of Italy and it is spoken by about 70 million people, primarily in this country. It’s the official language of San Marino as well, and one of the official languages of Switzerland, spoken mainly in Ticino and Grigioni cantons.
Linguistic News

The Italian Flag or il Tricolore is a green, white and red tricolor flag with equal panels representing the territories of the Republic of Italy. Adopted as the national flag on 1 January 1948, official colour designation under the Pantone Textile policy was established in 2003, then ratified into law in 2006.
Historical News

When I was growing up, my parents told me, “Finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving.” I tell my daughters, “Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job.”
Thomas Friedman

Who goes to Rome a beast returns a beast.
Italian Proverb

Italy hasn’t had a government since Mussolini.
Richard Nixon

How did Italy manage to end up with no Caribbean islands at all? Christopher Columbus took the trouble to discover the

Caribbean personally before the end of the fifteenth century. Try to get a decent plate of spaghetti there now.
Calvin Trillin

Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.
Bertrand Russell

In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
Orson Welles

If Spain goes under, Italy will come under even more scrutiny.
Mario Monti

In the Church of San Giovanni (One of the finest Renaissance churches in Italy) you can see Tintoretto’s masterpiece, “Madonna with Four Saints”. In the Church of San Giacomo you can see Botticelli’s masterpiece, “Two Saints with the Madonna”. In the Church of San Bartolomeo do not miss Tiepolo’s huge canvas, “Madonna with Twenty Three Saints”. In the chapel of San Marco, the focus of attention is Perugino’s small painting, “Madonna with just One Saint”.
George Mikes

Italy is a geographical expression.
Prince Metternich

Certainly, in Italy, nobody takes light for granted.
Barbara Steele

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.
Samuel Johnson

Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
Erica Jong

Internet penetration in Italy is quite low and the Berlusconi media machine controls most of what people see.
Joichi Ito

I would like to thank my parents in Vergaio, a little village in Italy. They gave me the biggest gift: poverty.
Roberto Benigni

Gli italiani sono irrimediabilmente fatti per la dittatura.
Ennio Flaiano

The ideological mix-up is a natural, exasperating and, at the same time, endearing feature in this country of fierce individualists. There are seventy-five political parties in Italy – although not all are represented in parliament. Most of these parties are very small but even the smallest can boast of a sharp and unbridgeable ideological split. There is a party which has only one single member. He is schizophrenic.
George Mikes

In Italy there are about 60 million people and we know how high is the percentage of morons on national soil. However, in China there are about 1.4 billion people and in India almost 1.3 billion. Therefore I wonder then, if more or less all the world is a small village, with how many morons should we have to come to terms on the territory of this stupid planet.
Carl William Brown

You have to remember that Italy is second to none, in fact, if Germany has more than 3,500 brothels, Italy has the Vatican!
Carl William Brown

Appeal to all scholars of stupidity in the world. Come to Italy, this country has the highest rate of morons of the universe, especially among political, bureaucratic, judicial, religious, intellectual, artistic, and mass media members, so it is the best place to develop your own field research.
Carl William Brown

To be a true philosopher you must study stupidity a lot, that’s why, as Doctor Samuel Johnson used to say, a man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.
Carl William Brown

Italy is one of the world leading country of bureaucracy and stupidity.
Carl William Brown

The ideological mix-up is a natural, exasperating and, at the same time, endearing feature in this country of fierce individualists. There are seventy-five political parties in Italy – although not all are represented in parliament. Most of these parties are very small but even the smallest can boast of a sharp and unbridgeable ideological split. There is a party which has only one single member. He is schizophrenic.
George Mikes

Since Italy is the land of bureaucratic and political nonsense, it tries to make up for the lost chances through a complex system of confused laws and logical stupidity.
Carl William Brown

The increased presence of Muslims in Italy and in Europe is directly proportional to our loss of freedom.
Oriana Fallaci

Italy is doomed to disappear, it is too stupid to survive!
Carl William Brown

The most hypocritical, bootlicking, obsequious, slavelike, submissive, unfree journalists in Europe, this is Italy.
Carl William Brown

The Italians may be clever and quick-witted but they are not intellectuals. They lack wanderlust, indeed, most of them lack intellectual curiosity in every shape and form.
George Mikes

In Italy there are a lot of illegal things, since the law is illegal too.
Carl William Brown

Prices in Italy are only slightly lower than in France, which means that Italy is a very expensive country for everyone, natives, visitors and tourists.
George Mikes

Repetita iuvant. Italy, a land of great saints, poets, sailors, artists, statesmen, businessmen, lawyers, intellectuals, professors, journalists, whores, gangsters, religious parasites and dickheads.
Carl William Brown

The main characteristic of English conversation is that no one ever speaks; of Italian that everyone speaks at the same time. One iron law reigns supreme in Italian conversation: the survival of the loudest.
George Mikes

In Italy we have not a Common law legal system, we have a stupid one instead!
Carl William Brown

Hotel bills are scrupulously honest all over Italy… The only case which puzzled me occured in Naples. I wondered whether they were justified in adding 230 lire for heating to my bill in early June.
George Mikes

The Cathedral of this ancient and beautiful city of ……….* is of particular interest. It is the third largest Cathedral in Italy. It is a magnificent Gothic building (not pure Gothic but pure enough for the vast majority of tourists). The Italians, in their outlandish way, like to refer to the Cathedral as Il Duomo. * Fill in the name of the city with pencil. Rub it afterwards.
George Mikes

In Italy there are many illegal things, but stupidity is the most legal of all.
Carl William Brown

Italians intellectuals are few and far between. This is not a derogatory statement; nor is it a praise… Italy can boast of a number of intellectuals – brilliant and witty. But their number is small – much smaller than in France, England or Germany. The Italians, as a nation, do not read much. Observe a rush hour crowd in London or New York on the one hand and in Rome on the other. In London and New York one person in ten will be without a paper; in Rome one in ten will have a paper. The Italians will watch the women in the bus or tram, the crowd in the street or the passing shop-windows but they do not read.
George Mikes

The stupidest and most corrupted, dangerous, useless, incompetent, unfit and inefficient politicians in Europe: this is Italy.
Carl William Brown

On Amazon with Kindle Unlimited you can read the new edition of this book, that is Aphorismi et sententiae de italia et italis: Aforismi, citazioni, battute, invettive e riflessioni sull’Italia e gli Italiani (with English Quotes) by Carl William Brown

You can also download the first edition of the book with a lot of quotes about Italy by various authors from this link. Enjoy our beautiful country! 

All 20 Italian Regions Stereotypes Explained

Read also:

https://www.english-culture.com/christmas-in-italy/

https://www.english-culture.com/aphorisms-on-italy/

https://www.english-culture.com/quotations-on-italy/

Quotes by authors

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Entertainment

News and events

Black Friday day falls every year on the first Friday after Thanksgiving, the day of Thanksgiving, a typical holiday in the United States and celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. In 2025, Black Friday falls on November 28, the day in which all stores offer commercial bargains and discounts, not only on clothing and gift ideas, but also on many products for the home and kitchen. Since 1952, the day after Thanksgiving has traditionally been seen in the United States, together with Cyber Monday, as the start of the Christmas shopping season and related sales, even though the term “Black Friday” has only been widely used in the past decade.

Black Friday is a scam. You should be mad they overcharge you 364 days a year.
Unknown

You may have heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There’s another day you might want to know about: Giving Tuesday. The idea is pretty straightforward. On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, shoppers take a break from their gift-buying and donate what they can to charity.
Bill Gates

What do Black Friday shoppers and the Thanksgiving turkey have in common? They know what it’s like to be jammed into a small place and stuffed.
Humoropedia

Make sure the clothes you buy on Black Friday take into account how fat you got on Thanksgiving.
Unknown

We live in a consumer culture, and Black Friday is like the July 4th of that culture. It might be good not to live in this culture, but it terms of what we can do to make people safer at big sales, it seems more useful to try to avoid dangerous crowd conditions.
John Seabrook

Let’s spend Thanksgiving spilling food on our clothes, and Black Friday buying new ones.
Unknown

Black Friday sale. My house. You and I. All clothes will be 100% off.
Kappit

As reported in the Forbes “Entrepreneurs” column on December 3, 2013: “Cyber Monday, the online counterpart to Black Friday, has been gaining unprecedented popularity -to the point where Cyber Sales are continuing on throughout the week.” Peter Greenberg, Travel Editor for CBS News, further advises: “If you want a real deal on Black Friday, stay away from the mall. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are all part of Cyber Week.

Sorry shoppers on Black Friday will block and tackle better than your football team on Thanksgiving.
Unknown

I thought Black Friday was when everyone puts on blackface and steals children from Wal-Mart.
Stephen Colbert

Black Friday: Because only in America, people trample others for sales exactly one day after being thankful for what they already have.
Unknown

The National Retail Federation releases figures on the sales for each Thanksgiving weekend. The Federation’s definition of “Black Friday weekend” includes Thursday, Friday, Saturday and projected spending for Sunday. The survey estimates number of shoppers, not number of people.

The length of the shopping season is not the same across all years: the date for Black Friday varies between November 23 and 29, while Christmas Eve is fixed at December 24. 2012 had the longest shopping season since 2007.

My version of Black Friday is deleting all the people in my phone who sent me a “mass Thanksgiving text.”
Blake Griffin

For those of us in the financial world, Black Friday has a strong negative connotation, referring to a stock market catastrophe.
Mark Skousen

Black Friday, in reality, is a symptom of the plight that 30 years of Reaganomics has brought to working people in America. Right along with the frenzied rise of shoppers willing to fight each other at retail outlets across America, we’ve been steadily, for the last 30 years, watching the destruction of organized labor … of decent pay and wages and conditions for working people… We have Black Friday today because the wealthy elite have strangled their workers for 32 years, ever since Ronald Reagan’s election.
Thom Hartmann

Here’s hoping Black Friday doesn’t turn into Black and Blue Sunday.
SomeECards

Happy Thanksgiving to someone I’d have no problem stomping to death on Black Friday.
Unknown

Black Friday is an informal name for the day following Thanksgiving Day in the United States (the fourth Thursday of November), which has been regarded as the beginning of the country’s Christmas shopping season since 1952. It is a busy shopping day and is a holiday in some states. Many people have a day off work or choose to take a day from their amount of yearly leave on Black Friday. Some people use this occasion also to make trips to see family members or friends who live in other areas or to go on vacation. Others use it to start shopping for the Christmas season. Shopping for Christmas presents is also popular on Black Friday. Many stores have special offers, high discounts and lower their prices on many goods, such as toys, clothes, food and electronic gadgets and devices.

Black Friday is not a federal holiday, but is a public holiday in some states. It is not only the day after Thanksgiving Day but also the Friday before Cyber Monday. Many people take a day of their annual leave on the day after Thanksgiving Day. Many organizations also close for the Thanksgiving weekend. Public transit systems may run on their normal schedule or may have changes. Some stores extend their opening hours on Black Friday. There can also be congestion on roads to popular shopping destinations.

Black Friday is one of the busiest shopping days in the USA. The states which have official public holidays for state government employees on “The Day After Thanksgiving” include Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

There are two popular theories as to why the day after Thanksgiving Day is called Black Friday. One theory suggests that the term originated in Philadelphia, where it was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic that would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. This usage dates to at least 1961. The wheels of vehicles in heavy traffic on the day left many black markings on the road surface, leading to the term Black Friday.

The other theory is that the term Black Friday More than twenty years later, as the phrase became more widespread, a popular explanation became that this day represented the point in the year when retailers begin to turn a profit and therefore it is related to an old way of recording business accounts. As a matter of fact losses were recorded in red ink and profits in black ink. Many businesses, particularly small businesses, started making profits prior to Christmas. Many hoped to start showing a profit, marked in black ink, on the day after Thanksgiving Day.

In the United Kingdom, on the contrary the term “Black Friday” originated within the Police and NHS to refer to the Friday before Christmas. It is the day when emergency services activate contingency plans to cope with the increase in workload due to many people going out drinking on the last Friday before Christmas. Contingencies can include setting up mobile field hospitals near City Centre nightspots.

The term has then been adopted outside those services to refer to the evening and night of the Friday immediately before Christmas, and would now be considered a mainstream term and not simply as jargon of the emergency services. The year 2014 marked the introduction of this event in Bolivia, Colombia, Denmark, Italy, Finland, France, Ireland, Lebanon, Nigeria, South Africa and Sweden.

In order to organize well your shopping you should research the Thanksgiving and Black Friday deals in advance, because you have to consider that the shops are very crowded in these days. Make an itinerary and a shopping plan: be sure to check when each store opens. This may determine the order of the stores that you visit. Best Buy, which typically draws a crowd that waits for the doors to open, will be open at 5 p.m. Thursday. You could also make a night or weekend out of it, or you can also create a map of your itinerary, planning where to park and so on.

Don’t forget about Santa: Santa will usually be available to take photos and meet children in the center atrium of most of the common hyper stores from this day, and every day until Dec. 24. Photo packages are also available for purchase. Bring your family: The adventure of Black Friday does not need to be rushed or stressful, and above all you must pay great attention and be careful, in fact despite frequent attempts to control the crowds of shoppers, minor injuries are common among the crowds, usually as a result of being pushed or thrown to the ground in small stampedes, while most injuries remain minor, serious injuries and even deliberate violence have taken place on some Black Fridays.

In 2008, a crowd of approximately 2,000 shoppers in Valley Stream, New York, waited outside for the 5:00am opening of the local Walmart. As opening time approached, the crowd grew anxious and when the doors were opened the crowd pushed forward, breaking the door down, a 34-year-old employee was trampled to death. The shoppers did not appear concerned with the victim’s fate, expressing refusal to halt their stampede when other employees attempted to intervene and help the injured employee, complaining that they had been waiting in the cold and were not willing to wait any longer.

Shoppers had begun assembling as early as 9:00 PM the evening before. Even when police arrived and attempted to render aid to the injured man, shoppers continued to pour in, shoving and pushing the officers as they made their way into the store. Several other people incurred minor injuries, including a pregnant woman who had to be taken to the hospital. The incident may be the first case of a death occurring during Black Friday sales; according to the National Retail Federation, “We are not aware of any other circumstances where a retail employee has died working on the day after Thanksgiving.”

Most major retailers open very early (and more recently during overnight hours) and offer promotional sales. Black Friday is not an official holiday, but California and some other states observe “The Day After Thanksgiving” as a holiday for state government employees, sometimes in lieu of another federal holiday such as Columbus Day. Many non-retail employees and schools have both Thanksgiving and the following Friday off, which, along with the following regular weekend, makes it a four-day weekend, thereby increasing the number of potential shoppers.

It has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year since 2005, although news reports, which at that time were inaccurate, have described it as the busiest shopping day of the year for a much longer period of time. Similar stories resurface year upon year at this time, portraying hysteria and shortage of stock, creating a state of positive feedback.

Black Friday is a shopping day for a combination of reasons. As the first day after the last major holiday before Christmas, it marks the unofficial beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Additionally, many employers give their employees the day off as part of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. In order to take advantage of this, virtually all retailers in the country, big and small, offer various sales including limited amounts of doorbuster/doorcrasher/doorsmasher items to entice traffic. Recent years have seen retailers extend beyond normal hours in order to maintain an edge or to simply keep up with the competition.

Such hours may include opening as early as 12:00 am or remaining open overnight on Thanksgiving Day and beginning sale prices at midnight. In 2010, Toys ‘R’ Us began their Black Friday sales at 10:00 pm on Thanksgiving Day and further upped the ante by offering free boxes of Crayola crayons and coloring books for as long as supplies lasted. Other retailers began Black Friday sales early Thanksgiving morning and ran them through as late as 11:00 pm Friday evening. Forever 21 went in the opposite direction, opening at normal hours on Friday, and running late sales until 2:00 am Saturday morning. Historically, it was common for Black Friday sales to extend throughout the following weekend. However, this practice has largely disappeared in recent years, perhaps because of an effort by retailers to create a greater sense of urgency.

In Canada the large population centers on Lake Ontario and the Lower Mainland in Canada have always attracted cross-border shopping into the US states, and as Black Friday became more popular in the US, Canadians often flocked to the US because of their lower prices and a stronger Canadian dollar. After 2001, many were traveling for the deals across the border. Starting in 2008 and 2009, due to the parity of the Canadian dollar compared with the American dollar, several major Canadian retailers ran Black Friday deals of their own to discourage shoppers from leaving Canada.

The year 2012 saw the biggest Black Friday to date in Canada, as Canadian retailers embraced it in an attempt to keep shoppers from travelling across the border. Before the advent of Black Friday in Canada, the most comparable holiday was Boxing Day in terms of retailer impact and consumerism. Black Fridays in the US seem to provide deeper or more extreme price cuts than Canadian retailers, even for the same international retailer. In recent years, Black Friday has been promoted in Australia too, so a lot of stores run Black Friday promotions both in-store and online retailers throughout the whole country.

Since the start of the 21st century, there have been attempts by great online commercial groups with origins in the United States such as Amazon to introduce a retail “Black Friday” everywhere and in 2013 Asda (a subsidiary of the American firm Walmart) announced its “Walmart’s Black Friday by ASDA” campaign promoting the American concept of a retail “Black Friday” in the UK and Europe as well. Some online and in-store companies have adopted the American-style Black Friday sale day, although others appear skeptical, with one 2013 comment piece in the trade publication Retail Week labelling it “simply an Americanism, which doesn’t translate very well.”

In 2014, more UK-based retailers adopted the Black Friday marketing scheme than ever. Among them were ao.com, very.co.uk, John Lewis and Argos, who all offered discounted prices to entice Christmas shoppers. During Black Friday sales in 2014, police forces were called to stores across Britain to deal with crowd control issues, assaults, threatening customers and traffic issues. Black Friday appears to be growing in popularity year on year in the UK and all through European countries where the sales are quickly increasing and mostly internet retailers have used the event as an occasion to attract new customers with discounts, but bricks and mortar stores have already begun to adapt the shopping event.

In Mexico and other South American countries like Brasil, Black Friday was the inspiration for the government and retailing industry to create an annual weekend of discounts and extended credit terms, El Buen Fin, meaning “the good weekend” in Spanish. El Buen Fin has been in existence since 2011 and takes place on November in the weekend prior to the Monday in which the Mexican Revolution holiday is pushed from its original date of November 20, as a result of the measure taken by the government of pushing certain holidays to the Monday of their week in order to avoid the workers and students to make a ”larger” weekend (for example, not attending in a Friday after a Thursday holiday, thus making a 4-day weekend).

On this weekend, major retailers extend their store hours and offer special promotions, including extended credit terms and price promotions. The popularity of Black Friday is also increasing in India. The reason for this is the growing number of e-commerce websites. The big e-commerce retailers in India are trying to emulate the concept of shopping festivals from the United States like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Some websites offer information about day-after-Thanksgiving specials up to a month in advance. The text listings of items and prices are usually accompanied by pictures of the actual ad circulars. These are either leaked by insiders or intentionally released by large retailers to give consumers insight and allow them time to plan.In recent years, some retailers (including Walmart, Target, OfficeMax, Big Lots, and Staples) have claimed that the advertisements they send in advance of Black Friday and the prices included in those advertisements are copyrighted and are trade secrets.

In South Africa, Austria and Switzerland, Black Friday Sale is a joint sales initiative by hundreds of online vendors – among them Zalando, Disney Store, Galeria Kaufhof and Sony. Over its first 24-hour run on November 28, 2013, more than 1.2 million people visited the site, making it the single largest online shopping event in German-speaking countries. There has been growing interest for black Friday in Poland as well.

The counterpart of Black Friday in China is Singles’ Day or Guanggun Jie, literally: “Single Sticks’ Holiday” that is an entertainment festival famous among young Mainland Chinese people, to celebrate the fact that they are proud of being single. The date, November 11th (11/11), is chosen because the number “1” resembles an individual that is alone. This festival has become the largest offline and online shopping day in the world, with sales in Alibaba’s sites Tmall and Taobao at US$5.8 billion in 2013, US$9.3 billion in 2014, US$14.3 billion in 2015, US$17.8 billion in 2016, and over US$25.4 billion in 2017. JD.com also achieved a sales record of US$19.1 billion in 2017, while Lazada drums up US$123 million. During the festival, Alibaba set a world record for payment transactions, with its mobile wallet app Alipay processing 256,000 payment transactions per second, in 2017. A total of 1.48 billion transactions were processed by Alipay in the entire 24 hours, with delivery orders through Cainiao (Alibaba’s logistics affiliate) reaching close to 700 million, breaking 2016’s record.

Black friday is both the day after Thanksgiving and also the day before Cyber Monday. The term Cyber Monday, a neologism invented in 2005 by the National Retail Federation’s division Shop.org, refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday based on a trend that retailers began to recognize in 2003 and 2004. Retailers noticed that many consumers, who were too busy to shop over the Thanksgiving weekend or did not find what they were looking for, shopped for bargains online that Monday from home or work. In 2010, Hitwise reported that: Thanksgiving weekend offered a strong start, especially as Black Friday sales continued to grow in popularity.

For the 2nd consecutive year, Black Friday was the highest day for retail traffic during the holiday season, followed by Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. The highest year-over-year increases in visits took place on Cyber Monday and Black Friday with growth of 16% and 13%, respectively. In 2013, Cyber Monday online sales grew by 18% over the previous year, hitting a record $1.73 billion, with an average order value of $128. In 2014, Cyber Monday was the busiest day of the year with sales exceeding $2 billion in desktop online spending, up 17% from the previous year.

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