# Leo Longanesi's most ferocious one-liners

"Good for nothing, but capable of anything", an Italy that prefers inaugurations to maintenance and a flag bearing the words "I have a family": the most quoted aphorisms of Italian journalist Leo Longanesi, from his notebooks Parliamo dell'elefante and La sua signora, with the date he wrote them down.

- 21 votes · 18 items
- Aug 10, 2020 · P. Rinaldi
- https://even.best/en/l/5100/leo-longanesi-s-most-ferocious-one-liners

## Top 18

1. **Our national flag should bear, in big letters: "I have a family."** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — Parliamo dell'elefante (Roma, 26 novembre 1945).
2. **Good for nothing, but capable of anything.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — La sua signora, notebook (Milano, 29 marzo 1955).
3. **If there is one thing that works in Italy, it is disorder.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — La sua signora, notebook (Milano, 17 novembre 1955).
4. **Italy prefers inaugurating things to maintaining them.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — La sua signora, notebook (Milano, 3 agosto 1955).
5. **We Italians would like to have a revolution with the permission of the carabinieri.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Quoted in Beppe Severgnini, La vita è un viaggio (2015), p. 27.
6. **In Italy, everyone is an extremist out of caution.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — La sua signora, notebook (Milano, 19 febbraio 1956).
7. **A true journalist: explains very well what he does not know.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — La sua signora, notebook (Milano, 22 marzo 1957).
8. **It is not freedom that is lacking; it is free men.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — La sua signora, notebook (Milano, 8 gennaio 1957).
9. **Better to take on an undersecretaryship than a responsibility.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Parliamo dell'elefante (Roma, 4 novembre 1944).
10. **The Italian: totalitarian in the kitchen, democratic in parliament, Catholic in bed, communist at the factory.** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — La sua signora, notebook (Milano, 11 agosto 1956).
11. **All revolutions begin in the street and end at the dinner table.** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — Parliamo dell'elefante (27 maggio 1940).
12. **An intellectual is a gentleman who has the books he has not read bound.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — La sua signora, notebook (Milano, 27 novembre 1955).
13. **One fool is a fool. Two fools are two fools. Ten thousand fools are a historical force.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Parliamo dell'elefante (15 dicembre 1938).
14. **When we are able to tell the whole truth, we will no longer remember it.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — La sua signora, notebook (Milano, 6 agosto 1957).
15. **You have no idea of the ideas of people without ideas.** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — La sua signora, notebook (Milano, 1° agosto 1956).
16. **When their conscience rings the doorbell, they pretend not to be home.** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — La sua signora, notebook (Milano, 20 gennaio 1951).
17. **They lived unhappily ever after because it was cheaper.** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — Parliamo dell'elefante (15 marzo 1938).
18. **The Neapolitan does not beg for alms; he suggests them to you.** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — Parliamo dell'elefante (Napoli, 11 novembre 1943).

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