Look, we must have courage. Seriously, courage — look, I tell you this from the heart. On Sunday I read something wonderful. At a certain point Pliny the Younger speaks with a consul who is going to govern Athens and he says: "Listen to me, my friend, you are going to a place that 500 years earlier gave poetry, architecture, philosophy to humanity. Now they are in great difficulty. Have great respect for them." Listen to how beautiful that is — he asks for respect for a people who at that moment were at the lowest point of human decline. Why must we be hard when a human being is in difficulty, whether it is a people, a nation, a real human being? That is why I say that when you come here you have the chance to see the famous sickness of the soul.
But if we have the courage — and I always repeat this because it is one of the most beautiful things I have found in the last two years — when Pavel Florensky, 1937, is condemned to death by the Russians, he knows he has 23 days left and he writes a beautiful letter to his children. Listen, you young people, my beloved children: when your heart is heavy, when someone offends you, when someone humiliates you, when something does not work out for you, go outside and look at the sky, the stars, and everything will be rebalanced. And here in this place you have the chance to look at the sky, the stars. So please, we must have the courage to go back to looking at the sky and the stars.
I went — since I feel Italian — look, they gave me two gifts here. One says that I have honored the Italian Republic. I went to my father, I started crying, my father and I, for having honored the Italian Republic. Then I made a mistake with a Swiss man, he mocked me saying, "But in Italy it's chaos." We were in Zurich. It was a grey day like today in Zurich. I said, "Well, you married a woman from Puglia, try not to be too annoying." He started by saying that in Italy it's always chaos. I told him, "Excuse me, but if they don't bring you the money, for you it's tough business, eh — we have the craftsmanship."
Unfortunately, alas, the internet has redrawn the world map of work, right? And we have to acknowledge that certain low-level crafts are no longer within our competence — not because we are not capable. No Chinese or South American can buy a low-level Italian artifact, right? So it's clear, we have lost work and we must have the courage to take these human beings who worked in low-level businesses and accompany them along. Yes. Because then we need human beings in the work, right? But do you think creativity comes exclusively from one or two people in the company? Never. Never.
Every human being has a quantity of genius of a different nature and a different intensity, and we must be the organizers of genius. But if I give you esteem, esteem generates responsibility. Responsibility generates creativity, because you are creative when you feel esteemed. Rousseau says that the human being is creative when everything around is at peace with creation. Can we together find a peace with this creation? We have created a culture where intolerance, this discontent we don't know with whom. So I would like us to keep working for a world of dignity, so that our children can follow this process of rediscovery of the great value of human dignity. Do you agree?
We need to rediscover a kind of universalism of the world. Look, when they told me, "Do you believe in globalization?" No — I want to have respect for every human being, for any language, for any culture, for any religion. And then you ask me questions, or you ask them yourselves, otherwise I always talk. But look — you will know him — go and read Pericles' speech in 432 BC, the speech he gives during the war on the Peloponnese, to humanity. And he begins: "We in Athens do this. We have been accustomed to respecting the laws," blah blah. "We in Athens do this. We have been accustomed to helping the weaker." "We in Athens do this." He says it six times. Then, you know, the very last thing he says is: "Our city is open to the world. We never chase anyone away." "We in Athens do this." He doesn't tell you what you must do; he tells you what he does.
So, our culture is millennia-old — look, we are the best welfare state in the world. Do you agree with me? Let's go back tomorrow to respecting the laws, if we can — sometimes we like them a little less. Let's go back to having less fear of our governments. I am 65 years old — the other day a Spiegel journalist asked me, "Are you afraid?" Excuse me, I'm 65, I've seen 60 governments. What should I be afraid of? I'm not afraid of anything. Why should we be afraid? Young people know this less. 30 years ago, how did we treat gays, women, children? You women voted in 1948, not in 1448. In 1948 women voted for the first time. Think how humanity has changed.
So, let's take a step back. Let's try to have respect for others, to have esteem. A compliment always makes you better. In a difficult moment, if I give you a hand, you change — and this is the most beautiful place where one can express oneself on this great theme of life. I had the pleasure, for the first time, of living this place all day long and understanding the pain, the joy, the dream, the goal. I miss a year, I miss 8 months — the awakening. So I'll tell you something I can say here because — where is the director? Every year we host at our theater the young people from here at San Patrignano, and I saw a boy who came from London because he wanted to give a kiss to the love of his life, who was here three years ago in this place. But you know the rule is that you cannot touch each other. I organized it — I took her by the hand up to the theater bathrooms, I said, "Come with me." She came with me to the theater bathrooms, I left her there. Then I went to get him and I said, "I'll give you 10 seconds and no more, but give her a good kiss. May this love be important to you for your whole life." You cannot imagine that those 10 seconds were a lifetime.
I believe we would all listen to you for hours. I wouldn't want to disappoint you by saying that we don't all know what Pericles said in 400. Look, I lived in the countryside until I was 15, so think — I never saw television, I never saw a woman, because to see a woman naked I never saw one. The most was going to school, touching half a thigh at 12 — I never saw it, but what will that one look like, that one there? No, I mean, I saw it for the first time at 16, I'm not ashamed. That's why I'm also a supporter of manual work, right? You see, when we went to school, in the first year, when I was 16, they humiliated us because we came from the countryside, we spoke the dialect, we were dressed like country folk, and there was this bastard — I saw next to me a boy my age, his mother died, his mother died when he was 15, they stole his snack every day, and we didn't have the equivalent of half of what it costs now to buy a snack.
So one day I told my mother, "Make me a double snack." I said, "What are you doing? Don't worry." I bought a tube of Gutalax. I remember it often because I put it in his snack, and in the morning I told him, "Wait, today we'll see who steals our snack." Around 10 o'clock, two boys: "Teacher, can we go to the bathroom?" There were the thieves of our snack — they never touched it again. Why? Why — I don't know why you have to humiliate a human being? We came from the countryside, we had no money, we couldn't have breakfast. He lost his mother at 15 and you humiliate me. Why do you have to? It should be the opposite moment, right? You lost your mother, I give you a hand, I give you support. That, to me, is where we start again, right?
When Boethius, condemned to death — in his view unjustly — by Theodoric, says: "O blessed human race, if our souls were governed by that love that governs the heavens." So I didn't come here to tell you who knows what, but I would like us together to go back to having, from Monday on, as Andrea said, a slightly better vision of humanity, remembering what we were 50 years ago, remembering how we lived. I was there the day before Tiananmen Square in China, and I saw the Chinese living like animals. Now Chinese shepherds live the way I did when I was a farmer, with a mobile phone. Humanity has changed. But I beg you not to be afraid, because this is a great theme of life, and it is we senior parents, as Andrea said, who after 60 years are never satisfied with anything.
And if you, young people, come home and say, "I have an idea, Dad, how can I do it?" we tell you: who does your income statement, who gives you the money, who does your production? Send them to hell. Don't listen to the professors, those ugly people who don't want to pass on to you the joy of life. Here I have my friend Maurizio Olivero, professor. Don't listen to him — no. Oh, Maurini — no, it's not that. You shouldn't not listen to professors, but don't listen to those professors who don't want to pass on to you the joy of life. No — in "Seize the Day," Robbie Williams, how does it go? We need good people, we need courageous people, because you young people, as we were, you must be — you are the champions of humanity.
Here at a certain point I call them lamplighters, because you will know the story of the Chinese lamplighters. Who doesn't know it — well, the lamplighters — well, if you don't know it, I'll tell you. Do you know who the lamplighters were during Mao's revolution? They carried a stick, a cane with a light to illuminate all the people who were marching. They set out 11,008 strong, they covered 11,800 kilometers, 100,000 people, six women arrived — a thousand, a little more. The six women arrived and the lamplighter didn't know where to put his foot. Do you understand? He risked his life to illuminate the one coming behind. So, let's try to be the new lamplighters of the 21st century.
You've created a problem for me, because since the news spread that you were coming as a guest to our event, in our office they discover Brunello Cucinelli, your philosophy, and something happens to me — I send emails in the evening, messages in the evening, and they answer me, "Long live Cucinelli?" But are you married? No. Risky, but if you marry, you risk. Are you engaged? No. Are you sure? Don't send them to me at 2 in the morning. But let's be serious about one thing — this email business — but who calls you? Trump at 2 in the morning? Why do you have to send me the message at 3? Can't you send it at 7:55 if we start at 8? You can't send it to me, Sara. It's that beautiful girl you mentioned before. She answers me, "Long live Cucinelli." If you send it to me, she'll send you to [__] for sure.
But excuse me, can we make a phone call in an urgent moment? Yes, we can — if I make you a phone call, first I hear how you are, I hear your soul, I hear how your children are, and I solve the problem in 6 seconds that would take 10 emails. I can prove to everyone, from the youngest to the least young, that 25–30% is dedicated to nothing. Do you know where that time goes? In our soul we no longer have time to feed the soul, the mind. You need to eat every day, understood? So let's go back to living a normal life. I live a normal life, I have a phone, but I don't want to condition your life, but you mustn't condition mine. And this is a great theme, because this connection — have you seen how many people are taking tranquilizers of various kinds? It's not a good sign of life. Do we agree?
So let's go back to living normally, to playing jokes. Damn it, can't we play jokes anymore? We don't do them anymore. We had this village festival — I, on the other hand, was born with jokes, because at the bar, what did we do? From 15 to 25 I lived at the bar — I didn't work at the bar, I lived at the bar. We only played jokes. So we went to this village festival of my friend's, the public tombola, 2,000 people, they give us the cards with the pen. Every so often he turned to me, I marked the number for him. At a certain point he says: "Oh, I'm missing one." I say, what luck — the number comes out, it goes up on the tombola. Since he was one of the organizers, they started saying, "Damn, they organized this." No, then it goes up, he was missing four numbers. We had to redo the organization of the tombola. It's a joke. I had to go up myself and say, excuse me — let someone say a nice one.
So I have a seamstress who has always been a bit in love with me. Not old — very old, but she is our teacher of everything. So when she measures my trousers she looks at me. So the last time she measured my trousers, before measuring them I went to the bathroom, I removed the toilet paper, but a rather robust lump remained. And then I told her, "Excuse me, but it seems to me they pull a bit here and I see it." Then I told her, "Don't worry, look." Seriously I tell her — Lorenzo the Magnificent, after six centuries, comes out and says: "Who wants to be happy tomorrow has no certainty." Can we rediscover the love for the joke, for the quip, for the pat on the shoulder, for encouraging you, for helping you — especially those who are in greater difficulty, and each of us in some part of life always has more or less difficulty, and that is where we must remember Pliny the Younger, remember what they were. So life is a bit like this, and I would like us to rediscover this love for true respect, for the difficulties of other human beings.
When I read — Oh, I don't write books, this is the book of my life. But did you write it yourself with your own hand? Yes, but it took me 5–6 years because I struggled, I toiled, and I wanted in some way, on one side the memory, but on the other a bit my feeling of life, right? So I'm not a writer, don't expect other books from me. This is the book of life. And there are a lot of beautiful things. There's a story that made me cry, Vincenzo. Ah, yes, it's nice. Shall I read it or will you tell it? No, no, no, do a bit of everything. I'll tell it to you. No, no, let's do it. No. Do you remember it? How do I remember it? If I'm here I have to thank Vincenzo, who gave me this money. He said, "Go home with this money and work." I say these sums were a frightening figure for me at that time. It was a frightening figure that Vincenzo gave me.
Here it is written: "My dearest, the memory of Vincenzo, one of the first clients who lived and worked in Milan. He told me about his native Puglia, about his suffering arrival in Lombardy, about life in a wooden shack until the wind carried it away. An episode so sensational that even the newspapers wrote about it. I listened, attracted by the charisma of a good soul. His words flowed lightly. He placed a very large order with me, accompanying it with this phrase: 'Here is the money, I want you to use it in your work.' There was a lot of it, I was left breathless. To understand my state of mind, it is enough to think of those difficult years and the modest sums I was managing at the time. Instinctively, without considering my own interest, I asked him what guarantees he thought I could offer him, since I had neither money nor property. His face relaxed into a benevolent smile as he said to me: 'I have five brothers and with me we make six, plus my father and my mother, and we are all convinced of your entrepreneurial and moral qualities. We believe in you. That is enough for us. So don't worry about the money. Work as you know how, in perfect serenity.' And that was all.
You know, I believe another thing we must rediscover is gratitude toward other human beings, right? At a certain point I believe — I'm not sure whether it was Montaigne or Bertolt Brecht, but more Bertolt Brecht — who says that gratitude is the feeling of the eve. Let's try to rediscover this. This is a man who allowed me to be here today only because he gave me money that no one else would have given me. So with a little — let's all thank him together. Thank you, Brunello. And when emotions — I believe it is a bit our task, right? That of all of us, as much as possible, Vincenzo, to reach out a hand.
Yes, I believe I listened carefully today, where in the principles you were particularly good. In the ways I would change slightly — we talked about it before, with great esteem and great respect. I also think, as Dante says, it is the way things are said, the way that offends, right? I would like the ways we find anew to be a bit more human, less, if you will, theatrical, because it is a moment of humanity where we need to rediscover the great ideals — respect, the dream, a rather special atmosphere, right? Because today you did things, you said beautiful things. I don't dispute the things said, but the methodology. If today I sometimes listened to someone who has great pain from the sickness of the soul at this moment, all those jokes, those quips would have seemed a bit heavy to me.
So, if I may give advice to a good forty-year-old — good, right? — try to be more Italian in communicating those things that come from the soul, but in our own way, a bit more human, because look, I believe we must rediscover the art of making ourselves loved and of not offending. I can think the exact opposite of yours, so thank you. I didn't want to — thank you. No, thank you very much. I didn't want to — he's a good boy. Good. Good. But we must be special, we must steal the souls of human beings — that is, reconquer the soul of certain human beings, because we need it, because each of us needs to find themselves again. Thank you, Brunello. Thank you. Thank you.
