Benito Mussolini Quotes

The Truth Apparent, apparent to everyone's eyes who are not blinded by dogmatism, is that men are perhaps weary of liberty. They have a surfeit of it. Liberty is no longer the virgin, chaste and severe, to be fought for … we have buried the putrid corpse of liberty … the Italian people are a race of sheep.

We want an extraordinary heavy taxation, with a progressive character, on capital, that will represent an authentic partial expropriation of all wealth; seizures of all assets of religious congregations and suppression of all the ecclesiastic Episcopal revenues, in what constitutes an enormous deficit of the nation and a privilege for a minority; revisions of all contracts made by the war ministers and seizure of 85% of all war profits.

What is freedom? There is no such thing as absolute freedom!

We deny the existence of two classes, because there are many more than two classes. We deny that human history can be explained in terms of economics. We deny your internationalism. That is a luxury article which only the elevated can practise, because peoples are passionately bound to their native soil. We affirm that the true story of capitalism is now beginning, because capitalism is not a system of oppression only, but is also a selection of values, a coordination of hierarchies, a more amply developed sense of individual responsibility.

A revolutionist is born, not made.

Not only this, but we affirm, and on the strength of recent Socialist literature, which you ought not to repudiate, that the real history of capitalism is beginning now, because capitalism is not only a system of oppression, but a selection of that which is of most worth, a co-ordination of hierarchies, a more strongly developed sense of individual responsibility. So true is this that Lenin, after having instituted the building councils, abolished them and put in dictators; so true is it that, after having nationalised commerce, he reintroduced the regime of liberty; and as you who have been in Russia well know, after having suppressed—even physically—the bourgeoisie, to-day he summons it back, because without capitalism and its technical system of production, Russia could never rise again.

National pride has no need of the delirium of race. Anti-Semitism does not exist in Italy… Whenever things go awry in Germany, the Jews are blamed for it.

We do not argue with those who disagree with us, we destroy them.

At a given moment the worker, the tiller of the soil, must be able to say to himself and to his family: "If I am really better off today it is due to the institutions that the Fascist Revolution has created."

When the war is over, in the world's social revolution that will be followed by a more equitable distribution of the earth's riches, due account must be kept of the sacrifices and of the discipline maintained by the Italian workers. The Fascist revolution will make another decisive step to shorten social distances.

Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived in their relation to the State.

The struggle between the two worlds [Fascism and Democracy] can permit no compromises. The new cycle which begins with the ninth year of the Fascist regime places the alternative in even greater relief — either we or they, either their ideas or ours, either our State or theirs!

With regard to domestic policy, the current burning issue is the racial question. Also in this field we will adopt the necessary solutions. Those who believe that we have obediently imitated anyone, or worse, acted on suggestions, are poor fools toward whom we do not know if we should direct our contempt or our pity. The racial problem did not suddenly burst out of nowhere, as those who are accustomed to brusque awakenings think — since they are used to long armchair naps. It is in relation to imperial conquest; because history teaches us that empires are conquered by arms but are held by prestige. And for prestige it is necessary to have a clear, severe racial consciousness, that establishes not only the differences, but also very clear superiorities.

Karl Marx, too, was a jingoist. In 1855 he wrote that Germany would have been obligated to declare war against Russia; and in 1870 he said of the French: ‘They must be defeated! They will never be sufficiently beaten.’ And when in 1871 the Socialists of France, with Latin ingenuousness, after declaring the Republic, sent a passionate appeal to the Germans for peace, Karl Marx said: ‘These imbeciles of Frenchmen claim that for their rag of a republic we should renounce all the advantages of this war.’ One does not deny one’s country. It is possible to remain a Socialist and be in favour of certain wars.

For us the national flag is a rag to be planted on a dunghill. There are only two fatherlands in the world: that of the exploited and that of the exploiters.