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Benito Mussolini

162 quotes

“My labor had not been easy nor light; our Masonry had spun a most intricate net of anti-religious activity; it dominated the currents of thought; it exercised its influence over publishing houses, over teaching, over the administration of justice and even over certain dominant sections of the armed forces. To give an idea of how far things had gone, this significant example is sufficient. When, in parliament, I delivered my first speech of November 16, 1922, after the Fascist revolution, I concluded by invoking the assistance of God in my difficult task. Well, this sentence of mine seemed to be out of place! In the Italian parliament, a field of action for Italian Masonry, the name of God had been banned for a long time. Not even the Popular party — the so-called Catholic party — had ever thought of speaking of God. In Italy, a political man did not even turn his thoughts to the Divinity. And, even if he had ever thought of doing so, political opportunism and cowardice would have deterred him, particularly in a legislative assembly. It remained for me to make this bold innovation! And in an intense period of revolution! What is the truth! It is that a faith openly professed is a sign of strength. I have seen the religious spirit bloom again; churches once more are crowded, the ministers of God are themselves invested with new respect. Fascism has done and is doing its duty.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: My Autobiography (1928)
“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.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To the Complete Vanquishing of the Huns” speech delivered at Sesto San Giovanni (1 December 1917) p. 27
“All other parties and associations argue on a basis of dogma and from the standpoint of definite preconceptions and infallible ideals. We, being an anti-party, have no preconceptions. We are not like the Socialists, who always think that the working masses are in the right, and we are not like the Conservatives, who think that they are always in the wrong... First, we have kept in mind the general interests of the nation, particularly as regards the recent strikes. Secondly, we have considered the subject of production, because if we kill production, if to-day we render sterile the fount of economic activity, to-morrow there will be universal poverty.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sacrifice, Work, and Production” Speech in Milan before the Fascio Milanese Combattimento (5 February 1920) p. 67
“We do not intend to oppose the movement of the working classes, only to unmask the work of mystification which is carried on by a horde of middle-class, lower-middle-class and pseudo-middle-class men, who think that they have become the saviours of humanity by the mere fact of being possessed of a card of membership. ‘We are not against the proletariat, but against the Socialist Party in as far as it continues to be anti-Italian.’ The Socialist Party continued, after the victory, to abuse the war, to fight against those who had been in favour of intervention, threatening reprisals and excommunication.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: We Are Not Against Labour, But Against the Socialist Party, in as far as it Remains Anti-Italian” speech at Milan (24 May 1920), p. 73
“But after all, my dear friends, does Bolshevism exist in Russia? It does not any longer. There are no longer councils of the factories, but dictators of the factories; no longer eight hours of work, but twelve; no longer equal salaries, but thirty-five different categories, not according to need, but according to merit. There is not in Russia even that liberty which there is in Italy. Is there a dictatorship of the proletariat? No! Is there a dictatorship of the Socialists? No! There is a dictatorship of a few intelligent men, not workmen, who belong to a section of the Socialist Party, and their dictatorship is opposed by all other sections. This dictatorship of a few men is what is called Bolshevism. Now we do not want this in Italy.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Tasks of Fascismo” speech delivered at the Politeama Rossetti at Trieste (20 September 1920) pp. 116–117
“I recognize the fact that the sacrifices made by the Italian Jews during the war were considerable and generous, but now it is a question of examining certain political positions and of indicating what line the government might eventually adopt... This is in the interest of the Jews, who, having fled from the pogroms of Ukraine and Poland, must not meet Arab pogroms in Palestine; moreover, it is advisable that the Western nations should refrain from creating a painful legal position for the Jews, since to-morrow those same Jews, becoming citizen-subjects of those States, might immediately form foreign colonies within them.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Italy, Sionism, and the English Mandate in Palestine” speech (21 June 1921) delivered in the Italian parliament Chamber, p. 195
“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.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Attitude of Fascismo towards Communism and Socialism,” speech (21 June 1921) delivered in the Italian parliament Chamber, p. 199
“Above all, Fascism, in so far as it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism — born of a renunciation of struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put a man in front of himself in the alternative of life and death.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Doctrine of Fascism" (1932), credited to Mussolini but ghostwritten by Giovanni Gentile; quoted in Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and the Resistance in Italy : 1919 to the Present (2004) by Stanislao G. Pugliese, p. 89
“For Fascism, the growth of Empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence. Peoples which are rising, or rising again after a period of decadence, are always imperialist; any renunciation is a sign of decay and of death. Fascism is the doctrine best adapted to represent the tendencies and the aspirations of a people, like the people of Italy, who are rising again after many centuries of abasement and foreign servitude. But Empire demands discipline, the coordination of all forces and a deeply felt sense of duty and sacrifice.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Doctrine of Fascism", June 1932. Quoted in Paul O'Brien, Mussolini in the First World War: The Journalist, the Soldier, the Fascist. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. Also in Peter N. Stearns, World History in Documents:…
“Fascism establishes the real equality of individuals before the nation... the object of the regime in the economic field is to ensure higher social justice for the whole of the Italian people... What does social justice mean? It means work guaranteed, fair wages, decent homes, it means the possibility of continuous evolution and improvement. Nor is this enough. It means that the workers must enter more and more intimately into the productive process and share its necessary discipline... As the past century was the century of capitalist power, the twentieth century is the century of power and glory of labour.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Four Speeches on the Corporate State, Rome, (1935) pp. 39–40. Speech delivered to the workers in Milan. Eric Jabbari, Pierre Laroque and the Welfare State in Postwar France, Oxford University Press, (2012) p. 46
“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.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech held in Trieste (September 18, 1938)
“No one knows better than I with forty years' political experience that policy—particularly a revolutionary policy—has its tactical requirements. I recognised the Soviets in 1924. In 1934, I signed with them a treaty of commerce and friendship. I, therefore, understood that, especially as Ribbentrop's forecast about the non-intervention of Britain and France has not come off, you are obliged to avoid the second front [with Russia]. You have had to pay for this in that Russia has, without striking a blow, been the great profiteer of the war in Poland and the Baltic. But I, who was born a revolutionary and have not modified my revolutionary mentality, tell you that you cannot permanently sacrifice the principles of your revolution to the tactical requirements of a given moment... I have also the definite duty to add that a further step in the relations with Moscow would have catastrophic repercussions in Italy, where the unanimity of anti-Bolshevik feeling is absolute, granite-hard, and unbreakable. Permit me to think that this will not happen. The solution of your Lebensraum is in Russia, and nowhere else... The day when we shall have demolished Bolshevism we shall have kept faith with both our revolutions. Then it will be the turn of the great democracies, who will not be able to survive the cancer which gnaws them...”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source