Sicily Mafia Quotes

What would the world come to if people kept carrying grudges against all reason? That has been the cross of Sicily, where men are so busy with vendettas they have no time to earn bread for their families.

There's a proverb, a maxim, that runs, 'The dead man is dead; let's give a hand to the living.' Now, you say that to a man from the North, and he visualizes the scene of an accident with one dead and one injured man; it's reasonable to let the dead man be and to set about saving the injured man. But a Sicilian visualizes a murdered man and his murderer, and the living man who's to be helped is the murderer.

He swirled his drink and stared off into the crowd, terribly satisfied. “Have you ever seen a face so weirdly symmetrical? Put our man Luca Catenacci on a poster for…Sicilian cologne. Those genes? With the whole Vitelli-Marzano thing you’ve got going?” He issued a low whistle. “Unstoppable.

Above all, mafiosi in both Sicily and the US continued to think of themselves as a breed apart from other human beings and even other criminals. American or Sicilian, to be a man of honour means to operate beyond society’s measures of right and wrong.

For the first time the Don showed annoyance. He poured another glass of anisette and drank it down. He pointed a finger at his son. "You want to learn," he said. "Now listen to me. A man's first duty is to keep himself alive. Then comes what everyone else calls honor. This dishonor, as you call it, I willingly take upon myself. I did it to save your life as you once took on dishonor to save mine. You would have never left Sicily alive without Don Croce's protection. So be it. Do you want to be a hero like Guiliano, a legend? And dead? I love him as the son of my dear friends, but I do not envy him his fame. You are alive and he is dead. Always remember that and live your life not be be a hero but to remain alive. With time, heroes seem a little foolish." Michael sighed. "Guiliano had no choice," he said. "We are more fortunate," the Don said. It was the first lesson Michael received from his father and the one he learned best. It was to color his future life, persuade him to make terrible decisions he could never have dreamed of making before. It changed his perception of honor and heroism. It helped him survive, but it made him unhappy. For despite the fact that his father did not envy Guiliano, Michael did.

And so on that bright morning, the smoky Sicilian sun making them sweat, the six Mafia chiefs rode their horses up and down along the wall surrounding Prince Ollorto’s estate. The assembled peasants, under olive trees older than Christ, watched these six men, famous all over Sicily for their ferocity. They waited as if hoping for some miracle, too fearful to move forward.

Capitalism runs on investment, and lawlessness puts investment at risk. No one wants to buy new machinery or more land to plant with commercial crops when there is a strong risk that those machines or crops will be stolen or vandalized by competitors. When it supplanted feudalism, the modern state was supposed to establish a monopoly on violence, on the power to wage war and punish criminals. When the modern state monopolizes violence in this way, it helps create the conditions in which commerce can flourish. The barons’ ramshackle, unruly private militias were scheduled to disappear. Franchetti argued that the key to the development of the mafia in Sicily was that the state had fallen catastrophically short of this ideal. It was untrustworthy because, after 1812, it failed to establish its monopoly on the use of violence. The barons’ power on the ground was such that the central state’s courts and policemen could be pressurized into doing what the local lord wanted. Worse still, it was now no longer only the barons who felt they had the right to use force. Violence became ‘democratized’,

In 1934, strongman Fulgencio Batista forced President Grau’s resignation. Then in 1940, Grau lost his bid for the Presidency to his adversary Batista. Four years later in 1944, he did win the election and took office for a four-year term starting on October 10th. After Grau won the election and was the President elect, Batista still in office, blatantly attacked the National Treasury, leaving the cupboards bare by the time Grau was actually sworn in as President. Since Grau and Batista were staunch adversaries, it is highly unlikely that any deal could have been made in 1946 to allow “Lucky” Luciano into Cuba, especially with Luciano having been exiled to Sicily by the United States government that preceding February. Still, Lansky had enough political pull within the Cuban government to prepare for a strong Mafia presence in Havana. In October of 1946, in an attempt to keep his whereabouts a secret, “Lucky” Luciano covertly boarded a freighter taking him from Naples, Italy, to Caracas, Venezuela. Then Luciano flew south to Rio de Janeiro and returned north to Mexico City. On October 29, 1946, he arranged for a private flight from Mexico City to Camagüey, Cuba, where Meyer Lansky met him. Having the right connections, Luciano passed through Cuban customs unimpeded and was whisked by car to the splendid Grand Hotel. Luciano, having just arrived in Cuba, was looking forward to setting up operations. Cuba would actually be a better place than the United States for what he had in mind.

People in Sicily were unsure which possible scenario was worse: that a judge entrusted with the most delicate mafia cases had sold himself to the enemy of that an honest man had been destroyed by an occult hand. Some suggested a third possibly, that Signorino was not guilty of outright collusion but that he had committed some impropriety, accepted some favor, met or knew certain people of dubious reputation, which would invariant create an appearance of guilt with which he could not live.

American intelligence officers, somewhat better informed than the Duce, understood that for the projected invasion to be successful it was vitally important to have the Mafia firmly on the Allied side.

Whether or not the Mafia was able to make much difference is not easy to judge; resistance to the invaders was certainly greater in the east, where the Honoured Society was a good deal less powerful.

The Mafia, meanwhile, had benefited greatly from its collusion with American intelligence

At this time, too, many Mafia bosses were appointed to responsible positions in the administration simply because there was no one else.

Bandit monks and mafiosi monks were nothing new to the long-suffering inhabitants of rural Sicily.

This change in policy coincided with the Great Purge unleashed by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin between 1936 and 1938. Historians estimate that over seven hundred and fifty thousand people were killed, and more than one million people were sent to forced labour camps known as Gulags.

The Roman Catholic Church also suffered heavy losses - 422 Catholic priests, 962 Catholic monks and countless Catholic nuns and laypeople were killed.107

In total, it is estimated that the Pizza Connection drug business exported circa US$1.65 billion of heroin to the United States between 1975 and 1984.

Salvatore had been exposed to violence his whole life. He was now reminded of how the Mafia had begun centuries before he was born. His father told him of the story of a French soldier who raped a Palermo girl, only fourteen years old at the time, on her wedding day in 1282. When the raped girl’s mother found her she ran through the streets crying and screaming “ma fia, ma fia,” or “my daughter, my daughter.” Sicily’s citizens banded together and revolted against the French. On Easter Monday, at

Welcome to Sicily, miss.

When Guido and I fled Sicily twenty five years ago, we had no paperwork to be in the US, so there was no means for me to get a legal job, especially as a minor. Pickpocketing on the streets, I’d barely been able to feed my brother. My only choice was to reach out to the local Albanian clan.

And as far as I know, Sicily is run by Cosa Nostra. Bratva has no beef with any of the factions of the Italian Mafia. Maybe I should have told them who I am, who my father is. Now, I may very well end up dead before I ever get the chance to do so.

Di mafia non si parlava mai allora, tutti sapevano che esisteva una forza maligna capace di imporre la sua volontà col coltello e col fucile. Ma chi stringesse quel coltello e chi imbracciasse quel fucile era difficile dirlo. D'altronde, per chi lo sapeva, era meglio fare finta di non averlo mai saputo. I maggiorenti del paese, signori che giravano per i marciapiedi in giacca di pigiama col cappello a larghe falde in testa, negavano che esistesse questa mafia. E quando pronunciavano la parola, piegavano le labbra in giù, come per sputare. Portavano le mani all'aria e dicevano ridacchiando: favole sunnu… roba per turisti… E con questo il paese si richiudeva nella sua vita quotidiana, fatta di soprusi, di sofferenze, di torti subiti in silenzio, di cose taciute e mai dette, come fosse il più felice dei paesi.

Italy police arrest 8 in Mafia wind farms plot. Operation “Aeolus,” named after the ancient Greek god of winds, netted eight suspects, arrested in the Trapani area of western Sicily [and on the Italian mainland]. Police in Trapani said the local Mafia bribed city officials in nearby Mazara del Vallo so the town would invest in wind farms to produce energy. (Associated Press, 2009 [Google hosted])

Mafia landmarks are found everywhere in beautiful Sicily, an unfortunate byproduct of the island’s tragic history. By mapping theses strange sites and telling the amazing stories behind them, I hope to remind readers that the Mafia is not a romantic relic of the past.

Our No. 2 bottle, the 2012 Centopassi Argille di Tagghia Via, came from a region of northwestern Sicily more famous from pop culture than from wine, Corleone, the fictional ancestral home of Don Corleone of the “Godfather” movies. In fact, the wine comes from a group of cooperatives that cultivates land seized by the authorities from the Mafia.

You texted Garcia for help?" Jack gritted out. "Garcia? Not me?" "He has a gun." "So do I." "He's steady and reliable," I said. "He doesn't disappear for eight months. He doesn't go on business trips that require burner phones and secret codes. He doesn't refuse to tell me what he does for a living. I texted HELP and I knew he'd come. I wasn't sure about you." "You don't think I would have come if you'd texted me for help?" Indignation laced Jack's tone. "For all I knew, you were being tossed out a window in Rio, tortured by the Italian Mafia in Tuscany, or you were in the North Sea trapped in a Russian submarine." "The Italian Mafia are based in Sicily," he corrected me. "Tuscany doesn't have the port access they need for the drug trade." I folded my arms and sighed. "You missed the point entirely.

You’re a Marzano, that’s enough. You are testament to a union made decades ago, between Vitellis in Brooklyn and Marzanos in Sicily. For over twenty years, we’ve done what we could to keep that tie strong. We’ve made sacrifices.” The fire popped behind him, but he didn’t flinch. “What would you do for your family, Pia?

The island of Sicily is the largest in the Mediterranean. It has also proved, over the centuries, to be the most unhappy. The stepping-stone between Europe and Africa, the gateway between the East and the West, the link between the Latin world and the Greek, at once a stronghold, observation-point and clearing-house, it has been fought over and occupied in turn by all the great powers that have at various times striven to extend their dominion across the Middle Sea. It has belonged to them all—and yet has properly been part of none; for the number and variety of its conquerors, while preventing the development of any strong national individuality of its own, have endowed it with a kaleidoscopic heritage of experience which can never allow it to become completely assimilated. Even today, despite the beauty of its landscape, the fertility of its fields and the perpetual benediction of its climate, there lingers everywhere some dark, brooding quality—some underlying sorrow of which poverty, Church influence, the Mafia and all the other popular modern scapegoats may be the manifestations but are certainly not the cause. It is the sorrow of long, unhappy experience, of opportunity lost and promise unfulfilled; the sorrow, perhaps, of a beautiful woman who has been raped too often and betrayed too often and is no longer fit for love or marriage. Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Goths, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Germans, Spaniards, French—all have left their mark. Today, a century after being received into her Italian home, Sicily is probably less unhappy than she has been for many centuries; but though no longer lost she still seems lonely, seeking always an identity which she can never entirely find.

Russo’s participation in the ritual strengthened the theory that the origins of the Mafia were pre-Christian rather than dating from the Norman conquest of Sicily.

The mission of the New Yorkers was to build a national organization, aspiring to institutional permanence, based on Sicilian traditions. To suit the geography of the United States, it was decided that rather than have one national head like in Sicily, a boss of bosses, this syndicate should have a ruling family in each major American city with the exception of New York, which would have five families. All in all, it was a democratic approach to American criminality. To coordinate and settle interfamily disputes, there would be a commission of nine members. Behavior would be highly codified, with entry limited to members whose parents were both of Italian origin. The killing of any member needed to be sanctioned by the head of the family. The killing of any family head needed to be sanctioned by the other family heads, the commission. With this plan, Charles “Lucky” Luciano established the blueprint for the American mafia, La Cosa Nostra. It seemed that even in the criminal markets, rational actors tended to collude, form cartels, and create local monopolies, rather than ruthlessly compete for every last dollar to everyone’s detriment.

like a mafioso under interrogation. The mafia response to the law was always to deny everything. Deny totally.

when feudalism ended; the legal preconditions were put in place for a property market. Quite simply, bits of the estates could now be bought and sold. And land that is acquired rather than inherited needs to be paid for; it is an investment that has to be put to profitable use. Capitalism had arrived in Sicily.

By 1866 mafiosi such as Giammona were aligned with the landowners and politicians. Far from being the champions of the poor, they became the stick that the rich used to beat up the poor and