Shrewd observation by a 20th century Italian author about Americans: [View all]

Curzio Malaparte—an Italian author who had intense contact with Americans during the 1943 invasion of Sicily:

(This was passed on to me by my colleague in one of my Paris offices):

“Vous américains, vous vous levez tôt, mais vous vous reveillez tard.”

Rough translation: “You Americans, you get up early, but you wake up late.”

His observation was essentially that we had good intentions (getting rid of Mussolini and Hitler), and after it was done, we still managed to leave a mess, because we never bothered to try to understand the people we were working with.