It’s important to know that words don’t move mountains. Work, exacting work moves mountains.
Danilo Dolci Quotes
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| Birth: | 28th June, 1924 |
| Death: | 30th December, 1997 |
| Nationality: | Italian |
| Profession: | Activist, Educator, Poet, Sociologist |
About
Danilo Dolci was born in the Karstic town of Sežana, at the time part of the Italian border region known as Julian March. As a teenager Dolci saw Italy enter into World War II. He worried his family by tearing down any Fascist war posters he came across. He tried to escape from the authorities who suspected him of tearing down the posters, but he was caught while trying to reach Rome and ended up in jail for a short time. He refused to enlist in the army of the Republic of Salò, Mussolini’s puppet state after the Allied invasion in 1943. In 1950 Dolci quit his very promising architecture and engineering studies in Switzerland at the age of twenty-five, gave up his middle class standard of living and went to work with the poor and unfortunate.
Dolci has been proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize, denounced by the Cardinal Archbishop of Palermo; he has won the support of many Communists and some Jesuits, been threatened by the Mafia, and been prosecuted for obscenity by the Italian government for his book Inchiesta a Palermo. Dolci was a great writer. His books are remarkable accounts of the society he surveys, and their accuracy and insight have helped to give a realistic basis to any schemes for improvement. Above all he has given a voice to the abandoned, forgotten, despairing, nameless, suffering people of Sicily. Unforgettably he enabled peasants and fishermen, mothers and prostitutes, street urchins, outlaws and bandits, police and mafiosi to tell their stories.
Dolci died on December 30, 1997, from heart failure.
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