Education Quote by Emma Bonino

Credentialing can be a humblebrag, but in Emma Bonino's mouth it reads like a field report from the machinery of power: languages are not a hobby, they're an instrument. The first sentence is bluntly utilitarian, almost bureaucratic in its calm. "Very useful" is the kind of phrase that refuses romance. It frames multilingualism as infrastructure, not self-expression, which is exactly how a serious politician wants it understood: as a tool that makes policy, diplomacy, and negotiation work at human speed.

Then comes the second line, and the subtext sharpens. Bonino doesn't claim she is talented; she claims she is trained. A degree in foreign languages and literature is doing double duty here. It signals competence (she can read documents, catch nuance, operate without translators) and it signals cultural legitimacy. Literature, unlike "business English", implies an education in tone, metaphor, history, the things that turn a treaty from a text into a relationship. In a European political context, that's not garnish; it's a survival skill.

There's also a quiet corrective embedded in the phrasing. Politicians are often accused of being professional talkers with thin expertise. Bonino flips that script: her speech is backed by study. The emphasis on usefulness is gendered, too, in a way she likely understands. Women in public life are pushed to justify competence as practicality rather than ego. She meets that demand while still asserting authority, reminding you that the cosmopolitan polish people admire is, for her, hard-won labor.