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Quote by Sari Gilbert

“It is late afternoon and the daily, or nightly, game of cat and mouse between Rome’s vigili urbani, or traffic police, and the unlicensed street peddlers who set up their portable tables and lamps in Piazza Sant’Egidio where I live, or nearby, is about to start. And, as usual, the mice will win. Not because they are smarter but simply because they care more about breaking the law than the authorities care about enforcing it.”

Quote by Sari Gilbert

Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
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My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City

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Sari Gilbert

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“For historical reasons – centuries spent as the subjects of warring city-states with the rule of law often taking a back seat to power politics and family loyalties – many Italians, especially those from points south, have little respect for the law and, seemingly, little understanding of its purpose, which is that of setting the boundaries for civil cohabitation.”

Law EnforcementItalyLaw And OrderItalian CultureItalians
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
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“In Italy, most laws are honored more in the breach than the observance. “Fatta la legge, trovato l’inganno”, goes one saying that means, “pass a law and we’ll find a way to get around it”. You don’t have to spend much time in Rome to realize that stop signs, and even red lights, are often disregarded, as are those reading “no parking or standing”, and even “one way”.”

RomeItalyDisobedienceItalian CultureItaliansNational CharacterNo LawIgnoring Rules
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
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“Absenteeism runs rife, with too many unethical doctors willing to supply fake illness certificates. "My dentist was flummoxed when he was asked by a Finanza major to provide his wife with a (false) certificate claiming he’d been performing oral surgery on her on a day she had skipped work. But he did it. “What else could I do? I mean, I might need the guy for a favor sometime.”

ItalyItalian CultureItaliansNo LawIgnoring Rules
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
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“A corrections box such as which appears in many top US or British papers to rectify misspellings, mistaken dates, faulty identifications and so forth, is generally unheard of here... Once I pointed out to Messagero night editor that the first edition he was putting out had misspelled the name of town where the US president was holding a summit. “Oh, no one will notice,” he shrugged rather than change it.”

JournalismItalyAttention To DetailJournalistic IntegrityItalian Culure
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
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“...until recently Italian institutions were totally unresponsive to consumer needs and concerns, something most people knew, or sensed. Hence their passivity. Nowadays, fewer things seem to be guasti than in the past, but a lot of things that are supposed to work, don’t.”

ItalyPassivityItalian CultureUnresponsivePublic InstitutionsUnresponsiveness
Book:My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City
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