Speaker Walter Hallstein on the laureate:

‘Spiritually, Antonio Segni is a product of the world of the European University. […] The University is an eminently European creation. It was the University that first conceived and put into practice […] placing the quest for truth in the hands of men bound together in an autonomous corporation at its service. […] Professor Antonio Segni has been formed in that incorruptible service of truth which is the iron law of the University […] His name is appended to the constitution of our Brussels Community, to the Treaty which has taken its place in history as the Treaty of Rome.’