Marcello Pera

Marcello Pera

Marcello Pera (1943) is an Italian philosopher and politician.

Quotes

  • As with the fall of other regimes, a new Resistance is needed, a new redemption and then a true, radical, merciless purge... The process has already begun and, for much of public opinion, has already ended with a conviction.
  • I have read and reread all of Falcone's writings. He was a great man who saw things clearly. He did not like public prosecutors and judges being united in a single career and no longer believed in the mandatory nature of criminal prosecution, which, as it stands today, is nothing but a joke. I will say more: he would not have conducted the trials that Caselli subsequently did.
    • Liana Milella, E il ricordo del giudice coraggio divide il fronte dell'antimafia, la Repubblica, 24 May 2001, p. 12
  • Giovanni Gentile was a philosopher dedicated to an undertaking so powerful that it had not been seen for centuries: to conceive, shape, organise and disseminate an Italian philosophy, that is, a philosophy for Italy, a philosophy of Italy, according to a tradition of political thought that Gentile saw as beginning with Dante and ending with himself. (2004).
    • Quoted at the presentation of Giovanni Gentile, Discorsi parlamentari, Senate of the Italian Republic (editor), with an essay of Francesco Perfetti, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2004, p. 10.
  • The parties must step down and raise their hands... immediately and without the cunning that accompanies the death throes of their agony. That would be a coup against democracy: trying to resist the will of the people. (1 February 1993)
    • No, absolutely not, Mr Bossi. You must apologise... Judges do their duty... Many magistrates have already been murdered for enforcing the law... You are questioning the very foundations of the rule of law. (24 September 1993)
    • Gianni Barbacetto, Campioni d'Italia, Marco Tropea editore. Citato in Sono "giustizialista". Da quando Marcello Pera è diventato garantista, iltafano.typepad.com, 17 May 2007.
  • Berlusconi is halfway between a dapper cabaret artist and a television salesman selling kitchenware, something that would have inspired and distressed poor Fellini. (1994)
    • Michele De Lucia, Siamo alla frutta, Kaos 2005. ISBN 8879531530
  • An ill wind is blowing across Europe. It is the idea that we just need to wait and the troubles will disappear on their own, or that we can be accommodating even to those who threaten us and we will get away with it. It is the same wind that blew in Munich in 1938.
    • Senza radici, 2004
  • In Europe, the population is declining, opening the door to uncontrolled immigration and leading to a mixed-race society.
    • Provocation is not acceptable, nor are insults and offences against religious symbols. Nor should they be acceptable when directed at Christian symbols, but no one in Europe seems to care anymore. In that case, freedom of expression is invoked, while in other cases it is called blasphemy. Is this right? Europe seems to have lost its dignity, allowing itself to be offended and then thinking that its own offences against others are more serious.
    • Corriere della Sera, 21 February 2006
  • We are committed to reaffirming the value of Western civilisation as a source of universal and indispensable principles, opposing, in the name of a common historical and cultural tradition, any attempt to build a Europe that is alternative or opposed to the United States.
    • Manifesto per l'Occidente, 23 February 2006
  • The left hates our culture and our civilisation to such an extent that it is willing to hand it over, as it is doing, to Islam. Its foreign policy is acquiescence to terrorist countries and groups; its domestic policy is free entry for all immigrants and cheap citizenship; its social policy is multiculturalism; therefore, its urban policy is to close the American base in Vicenza! Yesterday, today, always against the West. And since the West also and above all means Christianity, the left, in order to be anti-Western, has chosen anti-Christianity, that is, secularism. This is the new frontier, the new dividing line between us and the left.
    • Libero, 3 February 2007
  • It is nothing new that Italian relativists, and not only them, try to use Europe, where relativism is dominant, to achieve their goals at the national level. It is the hypocrisy with which many speak of Europe. [...] Unfortunately, this Europe is diminished in itself, and it is from this Europe that the worst vices are imported, circumventing national sovereignty.
    • Avvenire, 11 December 2007
  • In everyday language, a secular person is someone who does not believe, while a secularist is someone who believes that those who believe have no reason to believe. This is not a tongue twister. Secular people do not base their worldview on revealed faith; secularists believe that any revealed faith is meaningless, except in a trivial, private sense, like a tic or a bad habit. The former does not believe, or cannot believe, but recognises that faith is a dimension of human experience that serves a purpose, such as giving meaning to life, attributing a role to humans in the world, and interpreting evil. The latter, the secularist, denies this dimension: for them, faith is an illusion or a misunderstanding or a failure of reason.
    • La Stampa, 19 January 2008
    • Realism carries the risk of dogmatism and scientism, but relativism carries an equally serious risk, that of nihilism and moral indifference.
    • Corriere della Sera, 16 January 2009
  • For Kant, there are no different religions, but rather different forms of belief in divine revelation [...] among which Christianity, as far as we know, is the most appropriate.

Quotes about

  • I am shocked by the idea that there are still people who take seriously Popper's analysis of Plato – “that bitter enemy of freedom”, as Marcello Pera uncritically describes him – without questioning the texts, checking the quotations or comparing them. These are elementary operations. Today, these may be unknown to most people, but they cannot escape the attention of a scholar who aspires to this role or who remembers them.
  • When commemorating the anniversary of Falcone's death, one cannot attack magistrates.
    • Sergio D'Antoni, from an interview of Claudio Sabelli Fioretti, Corriere Magazine. As quoted in Interviste.sabellifioretti.it (July 15, 2004)
  • There are two Pera, before and after treatment. Before, he was so punitive that he would have scared Antonio Di Pietro and caused Paolo Flores D'Arcais difficulties. Today, he is ultra-guaranteeist. Before, he was extremely secular, speaking ill of the law on fertilisation. Today, he defends it.
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