• Lack of such association is a very important limiting factor in the way of economic development in most of the world. The higher the level of living to be attained, the greater the need for Organization. Inability to maintain organization is also a barrier to political progress. Successful self-government depends, among other things, upon the possibility of concerting the behavior of large numbers of people in matters of public concern. The same factors that stand in the way of effective association for economic ends stand in the way of association for political ones too. "The most democratic country on the face of the earth," Tocqueville observed, "is that in which men have, in our time, carried to the highest perfection the art of pursuing in common the object of their common desires and have applied this new science to the greatest number of purposes”.
• The peasant is as ignorant as his donkey and the artisan is hardly less so.
• The peasants, Carlo Levi Wrote, "were not Fascists, just as they would never have been Conservatives or Socialists, or anything else. Such matters had toting to do with them; they belonged to another world and they saw no sense in them.
• Under a law passed in Fascist days, a villager who does not have a profession or independent means may not go to a city to look for work and he may not be offered work by an employer in the city except with the permission of the provincial authorities
• But neither his present hunger nor his anticipation of worse to come fully accounts for the peasant's deep dissatisfaction. There are primitive societies in which the level of biological well-being is even lower, but in which people are not chronically unhappy. What makes the difference between a low level of living and la miseria comes from culture.
• A generation ago peasants seem to have taken it for granted that they were a different breed than other folk. Some of them-Prato, for example-still do. But many see no difference between themselves and others except that the others are better off. Those who take this view are unwilling to wear a peasant costume or to be set apart in other ways.
• "Getting ahead" and "making a good figure" are two of the central themes of the peasant's existence. But he sees that no matter how hard he works he can never get ahead. Other people can use their labor to advantage, but not he. If he has a a bit of land, he may conceal the waste of his time from others and perhaps even from himself by some monumental labor-terracing a hillside with soil carried on his back from the valley, for example. He knows, however, that in the end he will be no better off than before.
• La misèria, it seems safe to conclude, arises as much or more from social as from biological deprivations. This being the case, there is no reason to expect that a moderate increase in income (if by some miracle that could be brought about) would make the atmosphere of the village less heavy with melancholy.
• The rate of economic progress in southern Italy is such that merely to retain its place in the income and status hierarchy a family must invest more and more in its children. Many lower class people sense that unless their children get a much better start in life than did children five or ten years ago, they will surely fall behind.
• In a society of amoral familist, no one will further the interest of the group or community except as it is to his private advantage to do so.
• In a society of amoral familists the weak will favor a regime which will maintain order with a strong hand. Until it involved them in war, Fascism appealed to many peasants-at least so they now say-because by enforcing the laws rigorously, it protected them.
• If we ask why the peasants of Montegrano did not develop the institution of the extended family, the answer is perhaps to be found principally in the circumstances of land tenure. Patriarchal or "stem" families could exist only where peasants could get reasonably secure possession of adequate amounts of land.
• That the Montegranesi are prisoners of their family-centered ethos-that because of it they cannot act concertedly or in the common good- is a fundamental impediment to their economic and other progress.
• The individual must define self or family interest less narrowly than material, short-run advantage. He need not cease to be family-minded or even selfish, but-some of the time, at least-he must pursue a "larger" self-interest.