IJ study archive

Schtitt and Mario (pp. 81–82)

quote

After Mario’s father Dr. Incandenza passed away, the new Headmaster, Dr. Charles Tavis […] had taken down Incandenza’s founding motto—TE OCCIDERE POSSUNT SED TE EDERE NON POSSUNT NEFAS EST […] —and had replaced it with the rather more upbeat THE MAN WHO KNOWS HIS LIMITATIONS HAS NONE.

Context

Succession has a paper trail. The dead father's founding motto — grim, Latin, about the one thing they can't do to you even if they kill you — comes down off the locker-room wall the moment C.T. takes over, replaced with a motivational-poster line whose whole meaning ("knows his limitations has none") is the exact inverse of Schtitt-and-Incandenza's doctrine that the limits are the game. Where Schtitt keeps the founder alive by quoting him, the stepfather-administrator overwrites him. It's the substitution pole seen from its cold institutional side: the same E.T.A. that transmits Incandenza's philosophy through the coach quietly erases his words above the sinks.

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