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07-05-2012

President Elio D’Anna: Address to the Graduating Class of 2012

European School of Economics President Elio D’Anna:
Address to the Graduating Class of 2012

Visibilia ex invisibilibus.
“I have dreamed a School that believes that happiness is economy.....that only a man who dreams can create wealth.....a School where a new generation of leaders will learn that economics is the art of dreaming..."

To know the European School of Economics you can start from any part of it. Anything will tell you about its vision, its pedagogy, its aim. Like the ocean which is salted wherever you taste it. Let’s start from its motto:

Visibilia ex Invisibilibus

Whatever you see and touch, the entire business of the existence, all that is visibile, is just a projection of your inner being: the invisible.

The inner, royal Kingship will always precede the visible kingdom, and not viceversa.

Be a King! And the kingdom will come!

Beyond the financial skyscrapers, the industrial pyramids, beyond the discoveries and conquests of science and technology and all that we humanity considers beautiful, useful, true, there is always the Dream of a man.

A School for pragmatic Dreamers

We are here, Palazzo Vecchio is here, the Duomo and the Baptistry with its amazing doors, the Uffizi with all its masterpieces and the city of Florence are here because of dreamers.

Ordinary Schools and Universities, they also teach dreaming, but their dream is projecting scarcity.

The very first lesson of any class of Economics all around the planet starts with this statement: “Resources are limited and Economy is the science of managing limited resources.”

Resources are not limited, humanity as we know it is limited. Man’s psychology is limited.

Economy is the art of dreaming. The capacity to transform the ‘impossible’ in ‘possible’ and then in inevitable. Digging the Suez Channel was impossible...... building the Eiffel Tower...... going from West to find East...... what Columbus did, was crazy. To eliminate the apartheid, to set India free, to imagine the United States, to fly was impossible… But unless you start dreaming, inventing Icarus and the myth of flight, the Wright brothers could never even exist.

A school for individuals, a School without borders gathering dreamers from all over the world… without division or distinction of nationality, of colors, of creed, of castes….. a School where the most important subject is to know your very mission in life, and where it is taught that the capacity of successfully acting in the world of events is the direct result of an inner discovery - the manifestation of one's own uniqueness.

There has yet to be seen a successful man doing something he doesn’t like.

Love what you do. Do only what you love. Is one of the founding believes that ESE gives to its students. We are uniquely born to do something…..
Individual/Integrity

Individual comes from a Greek word atomo, which means indivisible. ‘Atom’ according to ancient Greeks was the smallest existing element of reality and could not be divided… Individual/indivisible.

A man divided in himself, with a conflictual psychology, with doubts and fears tearing him apart is not an individual and cannot dream.

That’s why European School of Economics believes in integrity more than in knowledge. It believes in independent thinking more than in uniformity. We need the courage to take from inside, to rely on our own integrity, to believe in our uniqueness.

Success is always a revolution. It can never come from following others, looking in somebody’s eyes to find certainty, from thinking and doing what anybody else thinks and does. To prepare, to educate successful people means to encourage independent thinking, creativity, and intuition. All things that cannot be found in books.

In 1543, over 500 years ago a man had an intuition, finding something that was against reason, contemporary scientific evidence and everything that humanity believed till then. He discovered that it was the earth moving around the sun and not vice versa. It is not easy to think differently, and can be very dangerous. In writing his book “De Revolutionibus” Copernicus took two precautions: first, he dedicated it to the Pope, and second he didn’t publish it until after his death.

ESE is bringing forward an idea just as revolutionary and psychologically subversive: the notion that the world works from inside out, that our thinking creates our reality, and that thinking is destiny. Dream comes first and reality follows. Visibilia ex Invisibilibus. This way of thinking, these beliefs make the difference and single out our students from the multitude.

The DNA of the European School of Economics contains what we believe are the ingredients of the future for success and longevity in higher education: Italian taste, style, hunger for truth, humanism, and natural inclination for the renaissance, British rigor and pride in academic quality, and American vitality, determination and pragmatism. Above all, we have realized an academic space without borders where the young people can undertake their studies wherever they like and move freely from Milan to New York, to Florence and London, Rome or Madrid.

The European School of Economics’ mission is to create a new generation of leaders guided by inner integrity and justice, capable to harmonize the eternal, apparently opposing antagonisms: Business and Ethics, Action and Contemplation, Financial Power and Love.

Elio D' Anna, President
 

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