Quotes from Social Philosophers
Socrates
To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think
that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest
good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they know quite well that it was the greatest
of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not
know? -- Socrates, quoted in Plato's Apology
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways -- I to die, and you to live. Which is better
God only knows. -- Socrates, quoted in Plato's Apology
To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two
evils, no one will choose the greater when he may have the less. -- Socrates, quoted in Plato's
Protagoras
While I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy,
exhorting everyone whom I meet. -- Socrates, quoted in Plato's Apology
I am a citizen, not of Athen s or Greece, but of the world. -- Socrates, attributed
Men of Athens, I know and love you, but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life
and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of Philosophy. ... I am that gadfly
which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon
you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. ... I tell you that to do as you say would be a
disobedience to God, and therefore I cannot hold my tongue. Daily to discourse about virtue, and
about those other things about which you hear me examining myself and others is the greatest
good of man. The unexamined life is not worth living. ... In another world I shall be able to
continue my search into true and false knowledge. ... In another world they do not put a man to
death for asking questions: assuredly not. -- From Plato's The Apology
I am that gadfly which God has attached to the State, and all day long and in all places am
always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.
I am a sort of bag full of arguments.
It is very inconsistent for a man who asserts that he cares for virtue to be constantly unfair in
discussion.
Nothing is what it appears to be.
I am a most eccentric person and drive men to distraction.
Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
Then we shall have to start our inquiry about piety all over again from the beginning, because I
shall never give up of my own accord until I have learnt the answer.
No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
If you see a man fretting because he is to die, he was not really a philosopher.
I know nothing except the fact that I know nothing.
What is the depth of misery other than to desire bad things and to get them?
Aristotle
It is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at the first began to philosophize. -Aristotle, Metaphysics
All men naturally desire knowledge. -- Aristotle, Metaphysics
Man is a political animal. -- Aristotle, Politics
The end of labor is to gain leisure. The aim of education is the wise use of leisure. -- Aristotle,
Nicomachean Ethics
The two qualities which chiefly inspire regard and affection [are] that a thing is your own and
that it is your only one. -- Aristotle, Politics
It is not enough to know about virtue but we must try to have and use it. -- Aristotle,
Nicomachean Ethics
We see that all men mean by justice that kind of state of character which makes people disposed
to do what is just and makes them act justly and wish for what is just. -- Aristotle, Nicomachean
Ethics
Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered. -- Aristotle,
Politics
Law is order, and good law is good order. -- Aristotle, Politics
A man is the origin of his action. -- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Man, when perfected, is the best of animals; but when isolated he is the worst of all; for injustice
is more dangerous when armed, and man is equipped at birth with the weapons of intelligence,
and with qualities of character which he may use for the vilest ends. Wherefore if he have not
virtue he is the most unholy and savage of animals, full of gluttony and lust. -- Aristotle, Politics
They should rule who are able to rule best. -- Aristotle, Politics
The actuality of thought is life. -- Aristotle, Metaphysics
God and nature create nothing that does not fulfil a purpose.
Theoretical speculation must be based on facts gained by experience.
Bacon, Francis
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with
doubts, he shall end in certainties. -- Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning
About nature consult nature herself. -- Francis Bacon, Instauratio Magna
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. -- Francis Bacon, Novum Organum
The French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are. -- Francis
Bacon, Of Seeming Wise
Men commonly think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and
imbibed opinions, but generally according to custom. -- Francis Bacon, Essays
Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New. -- Francis
Bacon, Essays
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. -- Francis Bacon,
Essays
Burke, Edmund
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. -- Edmund
Burke, letter to William Smith
Society is indeed a contract...it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but
between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. -- Edmund
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
Cervantes, Miguel de
Everyone is as God made him, and often a greal deal worse. -- Miguel de Cervantes, Don
Quixote
Honesty is the best policy. -- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
I never thrust my nose into other men's porridge. It is no bread and butter of mine: Every man for
himself and God for us all. -- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
Chomsky, Noam
I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and
domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be
given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom. - Noam Chomsky, Red and Black Revolution
Churchill, Winston
A nation without a conscience is a nation without a soul. A nation without a soul is a nation that
cannot live. -- Winston Churchill, source unknown
Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No
one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the
worst form of Government except all those other form that have been tried from time to time. -Winston Churchill, speaking in the House of Commons, November 11, 1947
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
The appetites must be made subject to the control of reason, and not allowed to run ahead of it or
to lag behind because of indolence or listlessness. Everyone should enjoy a quiet soul and be free
from every type of passion. Then will strength of character and self-control shine through in all
their brilliance. But when appetites are unleashed to run wild, either in desire or aversion, and are
not reined in by reason, they exceed all restraint and measure. They throw off obedience and
leave it behind. They refuse to obey the rule of reason to which they ought to be subject by the
law of nature. Both the mind and the body can be well put in disarray by the appetites. -- Cicero,
De Officiis, I, 29
Darwin, Charles
[I]gnorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little,
and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be
solved by science. -- Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871)
...[W]e are not here concerned with hopes, only with the truth as far as our reason permits us to
discover it; and I have given the evidence to the best of my ability. -- Charles Darwin, The
Descent of Man (1871)
Dawkins, Richard
We are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules
known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment. -- Richard Dawkins, The
Selfish Gene
This brings me to the first point I want to make about what this book is not. I am not advocating
a morality based on evolution. I am saying how things have evolved. I am not saying how we
humans morally ought to behave. -- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
Defoe, Daniel
Fear of danger is ten thousands times more terrifying than danger itself. -- Daniel Defoe,
Robinson Crusoe, 1719
Democritus
Some men, with no understanding of how our mortal nature dissolves [at death] but keenly aware
of the ills of this life, afflict life still more with anxieties and fears by making up false tales about
the time that comes after the end.
The man who is enslaved by wealth can never be honest.
Virtue consists not in avoiding wrong-doing, but in being without any wish for it.
Medicine heals diseases of the body, wisdom frees the soul from passions.
Refrain from crimes not through fear but through duty.
In power of persuasion, reasoning is far stronger than gold.
We know nothing truly about anything.
People are fools who hate life and yet wish to live through fear of Hades.
Life is not worth living for the man who has not even one good friend.
The cause of error is ignorance of the better.
Men have fashioned an image of Chance as an excuse for their own stupidity.
If any man listens to my opinions, here recorded, with intelligence, he will achieve many things
worthy of a good man, and avoid doing many unworthy things.
By convention there is sweet, by convention there is bitter, by convention hot and cold, by
convention color; but in reality there are only atoms and the void.
Descartes, René
But what is man? Shall I say a rational animal? Assuredly not…. -- René Descartes, Meditations
on First Philosophy
The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellencies, are open likewise to the
greatest aberrations. -- René Descartes, A Discourse on Method
To be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it. -René Descartes, A Discourse on Method
No opinion, however absurd and incredible, can be imagined, which has not been maintained by
some one of the philosophers. -- René Descartes, A Discourse on Method
The principal effect of the passions is that they incite and persuade the mind to will the events for
which they prepared the body. -- René Descartes, The Passions of the Soul
But what, then am I? A thinking being, it has been said. But what is a thinking thing? It is a thing
that doubts, understands (conceives), affirms, denies, wills, refuses, that imagines also, and
perceives. Assuredly it is not little, if all these properties belong to my nature. -- René Descartes,
Meditations on First Philosophy
One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by
one philosopher or another. -- René Descartes, A Discourse on Method
What is there, then, that can be esteemed true? Perhaps this only, that there is absolutely nothing
certain. -- René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I,
who thus thought, should be somewhat; as I observed that this truth, I think, hence I am [Cogito,
ergo sum usually translated 'I think therefore I am'] was so certain and of such evidence, that no
ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I
concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which
I was in search. -- René Descartes, A Discourse on Method
Good sense is of all things in the world the most equally distributed, for everybody thinks he is
so well supplies with it, that even those most difficult to please in all other matters never desire
more of it than they already possess. -- René Descartes, A Discourse on Method
…of all the sciences known as yet, Arithmetic and Geometry alone are free from any taint of
falsity or uncertainty. -- René Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power. -- René Descartes, A
Discourse on Method
Dewey, John
The routine of custom tends to deaden even scientific inquiry; it stands in the way of discovery
and of the active scientific worker. For discovery and inquiry are synonymous as an occupation.
Science is a pursuit, not a coming into possession of the immutable; new theories as points of
view are more prized than discoveries that quantitatively increase the store on hand. -- John
Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy
Modern life means democracy, democracy means freeing intelligence for independent
effectiveness -- the emancipation of mind as an individual organ to do its own work. We
naturally associate democracy, to be sure, with freedom of action, but freedom of action without
freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos. -- John Dewey, Democracy in Eduation
Inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one that is
so determinate in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the elements of the
original situation into a unified whole. -- John Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry
Einstein, Albert
I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that
we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that
survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I
am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the
marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a
portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature. -- Albert Einstein, The
World As I See It
Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in
manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important
source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation seem to call for
watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. ... This new
phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable&emdash;though
much less certain&emdash;that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be
constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat or exploded in a port, might very well
destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs
might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air. -- Albert Einstein, letter to
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, August 2, 1939, delivered October 11, 1939.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein, On Science
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors
of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure
as I have received and am still receiving. -- Albert Einstein, The World as I See It
It is not enough that you should understand about applied science in order that your work may
increase man's blessings. Concern for the man himself and his fate must always form the chief
interest of all technical endeavors; concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of
labor and the distribution of goods in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and
not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations. -- Albert
Einstein, speech at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, February 16,
1931.
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. -- Albert Einstein, paper
prepared for initial meeting of the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their
Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, New York City, September 9-11, 1940.
An empty stomach is not a good political advisor. -- Albert Einstein, Cosmic Religion
Eliot, T.S.
A people without religion will in the end find that it has nothing to live for. -- T.S. Eliot, quoted
in Russell Kirk's Eliot and His Age (1966)
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
-- T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men
Freud, Sigmund
Men do not always take their great thinkers seriously, even when they profess most to admire
them. -- Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego
Thinking is an experimental dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves
miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in action. -- Sigmund Freud, New
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
Galileo
The Divine intellect indeed knows infinitely more propositions (than we can ever know). But
with regard to those few which the human intellect does understand, I believe that its knowledge
equals the Divine in objective certainty. -- Galileo, Dialogue on the Great World Systems
Gasset, Jose Ortega y
The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace,
has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it
will. -- Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses
"Confusion" is an initial phase of all knowledge, without which one cannot progress to clarity.
The important thing for the individual who truly desires to think is that he not be overly hurried
but be faithful at each step of his mental itinerary to the aspect of reality currently under view,
that he strive to avoid disdain for the preliminary distant and confused aspects due to some snob
sense of urgency impelling him to arrive immediately at the more refined conclusions. -- From
The Origin of Philosophy
Hitler, Adolf
Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggles and it will only perish through eternal peace. -Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
Holmes, Jr., Oliver Wendell
The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts, but learning how to make
facts live . . . All fact collectors who have no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Twostory men compare, reason, generalize, using the labors of the fact collectors as well as their
own. Three-story men idealize, imagine, predict; their best illumination comes from above,
through the skylight. -- From Collected Legal Papers
Hume, David
'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my
finger. -- David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature
Since morals, therefore, have an influence on the actions and affections, it follows, that they
cannot be deriv'd from reason; and that because reason alone, as we have already prov'd, can
never have any such influence. -- David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature
The great end of all human industry, is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented,
sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modelled, by the most profound wisdom of
patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the
elements and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object, of his being. -David Hume, The Stoic
Husserl, Edmund
Universal doubt cancels itself. -- Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and
Transcendental Phenomenology
Huxley, Aldous
A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political
bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced,
because they love their servitude. -- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
James, William
Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. -- William James,
Pragmatism
Our determinism leads us to call our judgments of regret wrong, because they are pessimistic in
implying that what is impossible yet ought to be. But how then about the judgments of regret
themselves? If they are wrong, other judgments, judgments of approval presumably, ought to be
in their place. But as they are necessitated, nothing else can be in their place; and the universe is
just what it was before - namely, a place in which what ought to be appears impossible. -William James, "The Dilemma of Determinism"
I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral
forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like
so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water and yet rending the hardest
monuments of man's pride, if you give them time. The bigger the unit you deal with, the
hollower the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. So I am against all big
organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results;
and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately
unsuccessful way, under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them
on top.&emdash;You need take no notice of these ebullitions of spleen, which are probably quite
unintelligible to anyone but myself. -- William James, letter to Mrs. Henry Whitman, June 7,
1899.
"The true," to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as "the
right" is only the expedient in the way of our behaving. -- William James, "Pragmatism's
Conception of Truth"
An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of a revelation. -- William
James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time
and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and one's own biography remain untouched. New
truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions. It marries old opinion to new fact so
as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity. -- William James, What
Pragmatism Means
A conception of the world arises in you somehow, no matter how. Is it true or not? -- you ask.
It might be true somewhere, you say, for it is not self-contradictory.
It may be true, you continue, even here and now.
It is fit to be true, it would be well if it were true, it ought to be true, you presently feel.
It must be true, something persuasive in you whispers next, and then -- as a final result -It shall be held for true, you decide.
-- From A Pluralistic Universe.
Kennedy, John F.
With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go
forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth
God's work must truly be our own. -- John F. Kennedy, inaugural address, January 20, 1961
We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will "talk sense to the
American people." But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion
that this nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is
nothing but just plain nonsense. -- John F. Kennedy, remarks prepared for delivery at the Trade
Mart in Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963
I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward
achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the
standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all
of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world
not only for its strength but for its civilization as well. -- John F. Kennedy, remarks upon
receiving an honorary degree, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, October 26, 1963
Kierkegaard, Soren
The Teacher's obligation is to be patient enough to permit deliberation and decision by each of
those he is trying to help. If his students do not choose, each in the light of his own contingent
existence and his own limitations, they will not become ethical beings; if they are not ethical
beings -- in search of their own ethical reality -- they are not individuals; if they are not
individuals, they will not learn. -- From The Point of View
What is Truth but to live for an idea?...It is a question of discovering a truth which is truth for
me, of finding the idea for which I am willing to live and die.
Machiavelli, Niccolo
Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great. -- Niccolo Machiavelli, The
Prince
For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities,
and are often more influenced by things that seem than by those that are. -- Niccolo Machiavelli,
The Prince
No one should be astonished if in the following discussion of completely new princedoms and of
the prince and of government, I bring up the noblest examples. Because, since men almost
always walk in the paths beaten by others and carry on their affairs by imitating -- even though it
is not possible to keep wholly in the paths of others or to attain the ability of those you imitate -a prudent man will always choose to take paths beaten by great men and to imitate those who
have been especially admirable, in order that if his ability does not reach theirs, at least it may
offer some suggestion of it; and he will act like prudent archers, who, seeing that the mark they
plan to hit is too far away and knowing what space can be covered by the power of their bows,
take an aim much higher than their mark, not in order to reach with their arrows so great a
height, but to be able, with the aid of so high an aim, to attain their purpose. -- Niccolo
Machiavelli, The Prince
Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised. -- Noccolo
Machiavelli, The Prince
Without doubt princes become great when they overcome the difficulties and obstacles by which
they are confronted, and therefore fortune, especially when she desires to make a new prince
great, who has a greater necessity to earn renown than an hereditary one, causes enemies to arise
and form designs against him, in order that he may have the opportunity of overcoming them,
and by them to mount higher, as by a ladder which his enemies have raised. -- Niccolo
Machiavelli, The Prince
There are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates
what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of
others; the first is the most exceellent, the second is good, the third is useless. -- Niccolo
Machiavelli, The Prince
Marx, Karl
The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property. -Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing
another. -- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. -- Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
The workers have nothing to lose in this [revolution] but their chains. They have a world to gain.
Workers of the world, unite! -- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. -- Karl Marx, Criticism of
the Gotha Programme (1875)
Religion...is the opium of the people. -- Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. -Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach (1888)
The demand to give up the illusions about our condition is the demand to give up a condition
which needs illusions.
Merton, Thomas
Insomnia can become a form of contemplation. You just lie there, inert, helpless, alone, in the
dark, and let yourself be crushed by the inscrutable tyranny of time. -- Thomas Merton, The Sign
of Jonas
Mill, John Stuart
The bad workmen who form the majority of the operatives in many branches of industry are
decidely of opinion that bad workmen ought to receive the same wages as good. -- John Stuart
Mill, On Liberty
When people are tolerably fortunate in their outward lot do not find in life sufficient enjoyment
to make it valuable to them, the cause generally is, caring for nobody but themselves. -- John
Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
...[E]ach person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good
to the aggregate of all persons. -- John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people
are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle
that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. -- John Stuart Mill, Letter
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and
patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A war to protect other human
beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and
which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice - is often the
means of their regeneration. -- John Stuart Mill, The Contest in America
Why is a single instance, in some cases, sufficient for a complete induction, while in others
myriads of concurring instances, without a single exception known or presumed, go such a very
little way toward establishing a universal proposition? Whoever can answer this question knows
more of the philosophy of logic than the wisest of the ancients, and has solved the problem of
Induction.
Mussolini, Benito
War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon
the people who have the courage to face it. -- Benito Mussolini, Encyclopedia Italiana