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Benito Mussolini

162 quotes

“Religion is a species of mental disease. It has always had a pathological reaction on mankind.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1904 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by Mussolini in 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt by James A. Haught (1966) p. 256. From a speech he made in Lausanne, July 1904.
“Science is now in the process of destroying religious dogma. The dogma of the divine creation is recognized as absurd.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1904 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by Mussolini in 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt by James A. Haught (1966) p. 256. Originally came from Mussolini’s essay l'Homme et la Divinité, 1904.
“Marx was the greatest of all theorists of socialism.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Mussolini: A Biography by Denis Mack Smith (1983) p. 7. Original source: Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini (OO) 1/102-3 (14 Mar. 1908), 135, 142.
“Militarism! Here is the monstrous leech that is incessantly sucking the blood of the people and its best energy! Here is the target for our attacks! We must put an end to barbarism, proclaim that the army is now a highly organized school of crime and that it exists solely to protect bourgeois capital and profits. We must not be deterred from proclaiming ourselves international socialists. We recognize no borders and no flags, we hate all steel, every institution that exist to kill men, waste energy, strangle the advance of the workers.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mussolini's article, (April 11, 1909), quoted in The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution, Jacob Talmon, University of California Press (1981) p. 487,
“The struggle against the religious absurdity is more than ever a necessity today.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When we claim that "God does not exist," we mean to deny by this declaration the personal God of theology, the God worshiped in various ways and divers modes by believers the world over, that God who from nothing created the universe, from chaos matter, that God of absurd attributes who is an affront to human reason.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With each new discovery of chemistry, physics, biology, the anthropological sciences, of the practical application of sound principles, dogma collapses. It is a part of that old edifice of religion which crumbles and falls in ruins.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How can the idea of a creator be reconciled with the existence of dwarfed and atrophied organs, with anomalies and monstrosities, with the existence of pain, perpetual and universal, with the struggle and the inequalities among human beings?”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Bible and morals called Christian are two cadavers.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Religious morality shows the original stigmata of authoritarianism precisely because it pretends to be the revelation of divine authority.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Religion is a psychic disease of the brain.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The history of many saints, beatified by the church, is repugnant. It shows nothing more than a profound aberration of the human spirit in search of ultra-terrestrial chimeras.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If today the Middle Ages are retiring into the thick shadows of convents, it is due to triumphant skepticism; and if the epidemic disease of religion no longer appears with the terrible intensity of former times, it is due to the diminution of the political power of the Church.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The faculty by which man is differentiated from the lower animals is his reasoning power. But the devout believer renounces reason, refuses to explain the things which surround him, the innumerable natural phenomena, because his religious faith is enough for him. The brain loses the habit of thinking; and this religious sottishness hurls mankind back into animalism.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Religious man" is an abnormality and "religion" is the certain cause of epidemic diseases of the mind which require the care of alienists.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: La Lotta di Classe (1910), while a socialist, paraphrasing French socialist Gustave Hervé, quoted in Mussolini in the Making (1938) by Gaudens Megaro
“The rapacious property-owning American bourgeoisie admits no limits, possesses no scruples and does not share the fears and the cowardice of our bourgeoisie. [They are] violent, absolute criminal. When they feel the need, they simply stain their hands with proletarian blood. They lack any human sense. They are only interested in exploitation.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1911 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Mussolini, R.J.B. Bosworth, London and New York, Bloomsbury Academic (2010) p. 70, original source: B. Mussolini, Opera Omnia (ed. E and D. Susmel), Vol. IV, p. 16 (written in 1911)
“Socialism is not Arcadian and peaceful. We do not believe in the sacredness of human life.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Talks with Mussolini, Emil Ludwig, Boston, MA, Little, Brown and Company (1933), p. 151, Mussolini writing for Avanti! newspaper sometime before the war, as quoted by Emil Ludwig
“Socialism has to remain a terrifying and a majestic thing. If we follow this line, we shall be able to face our enemies.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Il Duce: The Life and Work of Benito Mussolini, L. Kemechey, New York: NY, Richard R. Smith (1930) p. 54. Written just before taking editorship of the Italian Socialist Party newspaper Avanti in 1912.
“The law of socialism is that of the desert: a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye. Socialism is a rude and bitter truth, which was born in the conflict of opposing forces and in violence. Socialism is war, and woe to those who are cowardly in war. They will be defeated.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Il Duce: The Life and Work of Benito Mussolini, L. Kemechey, New York: NY, Richard R. Smith (1930) p. 56. Written just before taking editorship of the Italian Socialist Party newspaper Avanti in 1912.
“What does it matter to the proletarian to understand socialism as one understands a theorem? And is socialism perhaps reducible to a theorem? We want to believe in it; we must believe in it. Humanity needs a credo. It is faith that moves mountains because it gives the illusion that mountains move. Illusion is perhaps the only reality of life.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gaudens Megaro, Mussolini in the Making, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, (1938) p. 321, a statement made by Mussolini in 1912
“The root of our psychological weakness was this: We socialists have never examined the problems of nations. The International was never concerned with it. The International is dead, paralyzed by events. Ten million proletarians are today on the battlefield.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution, J.L. Talmon, University of California Press (1981) p. 492. Original source: Mussolini, Opera Omnia VI, p. 427, 1914
“You cannot get rid of me because I am and always will be a socialist. You hate me because you still love me.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini: A Biography (1983) p. 8. As quoted by Mussolini after he was expelled from the Italian Socialist Party in 1914.
“Do not believe, even for a moment, that by stripping me of my membership card you do the same to my Socialist beliefs, nor that you would restrain me of continuing to work in favor of Socialism and of the Revolution.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Italian Socialist Party’s meeting in Milan at the People’s Theatre on Nov. 25, 1914. Quote in Revolutionary Fascism by Erik Norling, Lisbon, Finis Mundi Press (2011) p. 88.
“It is blood which moves the wheels of history.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Parma (13 December 1914) quoted in Foreign Affairs, May 1924, p 234
“The dangerous persons for the socialist movement are not the intellectuals, but those who are not convinced of socialism. And all those who call themselves socialists without knowing why they are socialists.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gaudens Megaro, Mussolini in the Making, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, (1938) p. 130
“We declare war against socialism, not because it is socialism, but because it has opposed nationalism.... We intend to be an active minority, attract the proletariat away from the official Socialist party. But if the middle class thinks that we are going to be their lightning rods, they are mistaken.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mussolini’s speech in Milan (March 23, 1919), quoted in Stanislao G. Pugliese, Fascism, Anti-fascism, and the Resistance in Italy: 1919 to the Present, Oxford, England, UK, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., (2004) …
“Although we can discuss the question of what socialism is, what is its program and what are its tactics, one thing is obvious: the official Italian Socialist Party has been reactionary and absolutely conservative.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mussolini's March 23, 1919 speech to announce the first Fasci di Combattimento (League of Combat). Published in Fascism, Anti-Fascism and the Resistance in Italy: 1919 to the Present, Stanislao G. Pugliese, Lanham: Mary…
“This is what we propose now to the Treasury: either the property owners expropriate themselves, or we summon the masses of war veterans to march against these obstacles and overthrow them.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by Mussolini as leader of the Revolutionary Fascist Party (1919) in Fascism and Big Business by Daniel Guerin (1973) p. 83. From article in Mussolini’s Popolo d’Italia on June 19, 1919.
“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.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From Mussolini's Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Fasci), Il Popolo d'Italia newspaper, June 6, 1919. Speech published in Revolutionary Fascism, by Erik Norling, Lisbon, Finis Mundi Press (2011) p. 92.
“Lenin is an artist who has worked men, as other artists have worked marble or metals. But men are harder than stone and less malleable than iron. There is no masterpiece. The artist has failed. The task was superior to his capacities.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Popolo d'Italia (14 July 1920) "The Artificer and the Material," quoted in Mussolini in the Making (1938) by Gaudens Megaro, p. 326
“When dealing with such a race as Slavic - inferior and barbarian - we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy [...] We should not be afraid of new victims [...] The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps: I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech held in Pula, 20 September 1920
“Three cheers for the war. Three cheers for Italy's war and three cheers for war in general. Peace is hence absurd or rather a pause in war.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Popolo d'Italia (Feb. 1, 1921), quoted in The Menace of Fascism, John Strachey (1933) p. 65
“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.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech (21 June 1921),
“We assert—and on the basis of the most recent socialist literature that you cannot deny—that the real history of capitalism is only now beginning, because capitalism is not just a system of oppression; it also represents a choice of value,...”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Mediterranean Fascism 1919-1945, edit., Charles F. Delzell, The MacMillian Press (1970) p. 23. Speech given on June 21, 1921 in Italy’s Chamber of Deputies.
“I know the Communists. I know them because some of them are my children...”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech quoted in Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism by Ernst Nolte, Henry Holt & Company, Inc. (1966) p. 154. Speech given on June 21, 1921 in Italy’s Chamber of Deputies.
“I shall defend this pact with all my strength, and if Fascism does not follow me in collaboration with the Socialists, at least no one can force me to follow Fascism.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Italy: A Modern History, Denis Mack Smith, University of Michigan Press (1959) p. 352, Pact of Pacification, 1921
“[Provincial Fascism is] “no longer liberation, but tyranny; no longer protector of the nation, but defense of private interests and of the dullest, deafest, most miserable cast that exists in Italy.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in The Making of Fascism: Class, State, and Counter-Revolution, Italy 1919-1922, Dahlia S. Elazar, Westport, CT, Praeger, 2001, p. 141 and in Fascism in Ferrara, 1915-1925, Paul Corner, New York, NY, London: UK, …
“To-morrow, Fascists and communists, both persecuted by the police, may arrive at an agreement, sinking their differences until the time comes to share the spoils. I realise that though there are no political affinities between us, there are plenty of intellectual affinities. Like them, we believe in the necessity for a centralised and unitary state, imposing an iron discipline on everyone, but with the difference that they reach this conclusion through the idea of class, we through the idea of the nation.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution, Jacob Talmon, University of California Press (1981) p. 494, Mussolini's declaration near the end of 1921
“Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth ... then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity... From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diuturna [The Lasting] (1921) as quoted in Rational Man : A Modern Interpretation of Aristotelian Ethics (1962) by H. B. Veatch
“Christ is dead and his teachings moribund.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1904 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Twentieth Century Journey: The Start 1904-1930, William L. Shirer, Little, Brown & Company, (1976) p. 402 (proclaimed in 1922)
“Our program is simple: we wish to govern Italy. They ask us for programs but there are already too many. It is not programs that are wanting for the salvation of Italy but men and will power.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at Udine (September 20, 1922) "The Question of Regime. The Monarchy and Fascism," quoted in A History of Civilization (1955) by Crane Brinton, John B. Christopher, and Robert Lee Wolff, p. 520
“The measures adopted to restore public order are: First of all, the elimination of the so-called subversive elements. ...They were elements of disorder and subversion. On the morrow of each conflict I gave the categorical order to confiscate the largest possible number of weapons of every sort and kind. This confiscation, which continues with the utmost energy, has given satisfactory results.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech before the Italian Senate (8 June 1923). Mussolini as Revealed in His Political Speeches (London & Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1923), pp. 308–309.
“Tell America that I like her, like her because she is strong, simple, and direct. I wish Italy to be the same and shall try to make her so.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Message sent to the White House, apparently in mid-June 1923, as quoted by Warren G. Harding in his June 21, 1923 speech in St. Louis. James W. Murphy, Speeches and Addresses of Warren G. Harding, President of the Unite…
“What is freedom? There is no such thing as absolute freedom!”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Eja! Eja! Alala!" in Time magazine (23 July 1923)
“Liberty is a duty, not a right.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech on the 5th anniversary of the Combat Leagues (24 March 1924) quoted in Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism (1991) by Tim Redman, p. 114.
“God does not exist—religion in science is an absurdity, in practice an immorality and in men a disease.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Religion: Benito a Christian?” Time magazine (August 25, 1924)
“State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted from “The Labor Charter: The Corporate State and its Organization”, promulgated by Mussolini's Grand Council of Fascism, Article 9, (April 21, 1927) Copy found in Mediterranean Fascism 1919-1945, Charles F. Delze…
“Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter's prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes' excellent little book, The End of Laissez-Faire (1926) might, so far as it goes, serve as a useful introduction to fascist economics. There is scarcely anything to object to in it and there is much to applaud.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted from Mussolini's review of Keynes' new book in Universal Aspects of Fascism, James Strachey Barnes, Williams and Norgate, London: UK, (1928) pp. 113–114
“Let us have a dagger between our teeth, a bomb in our hands and an infinite scorn in our hearts.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech (1928), as quoted in The Great Quotations (1966) by George Seldes, p. 349