Quotes

Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the marriage of government and corporate power.

Keep your heart a desert.

People are like women, they go with the winning man.

I only need a few thousand dead so that I can sit at the peace conference as a man who has fought.

[on 6/10/40] The hour of destiny has arrived for our fatherland. We are going to war against the decrepit democracies . . . to break the chains that tie us to the Mediterranean.

The Racial Manifesto could have been avoided. It dealt with the scientific abstruseness of a few teachers and journalists, a conscientious German essay translated into bad Italian. It is far from what I have said, written and signed on the subject. I suggest that you consult the old issues of Il Popolo d'Italia. For this reason I am far from accepting Rosenberg's myth.

No one, friendly or hostile, could understand the modern world without taking fascism into account.

Go to the Fuhrer at once, and tell him that whatever happens, I will be at his side, but that I request a twenty-four hour delay before hostilities begin. In the meantime, I will study what can be done to solve the problem.

[after learning of the execution of Galeazzo Ciano] From that morning I have begun to die.

It is not the regime that has betrayed the monarchy, it is the monarchy that has betrayed the regime. When a monarchy fails in its duties, it loses every reason for being ... The state we want to establish will be national and social in the highest sense of the word; that is, it will be Fascist, thus returning to our origins.

[January 1945] Seven years ago I was an interesting person. Now I am a corpse. Yes, madam, I am finished. My star has fallen. I work and I try, yet know that all is but a farce ... I await the end of the tragedy and - strangely detached from everything - I do not feel any more an actor. I feel I am the last of spectators.

[on the Munich Crisis] If there are two camps, for and against Prague, let it be known that Italy has chosen its side.

After the defeat I will be covered furiously in spit but then they will come to clean me with veneration.

I agree with you entirely. I don't believe a bit in the stupid anti-Semitic theory. I am carrying out my policy entirely for political reasons.

[on the New Deal] Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices ... Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism.

Fascism has now acquired throughout the world that universally which belongs to all doctrines which by achieving self-expression represent a moment in the history of human thought.

The liberal state is destined to perish. All the political experiments of our day are anti-liberal.

[on British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden] The best dressed fool in Europe.

[on the assassination of Austrian dictator Englebert Dollfuss] The independence of Austria, for which he has fallen, is a principle that has been defended and will be defended by Italy even more strenuously.

I am and shall remain a socialist and my convictions will never change! They are bred into my very bones.

All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.

There has never been antisemitism in Italy.

[on the Italian Empire] It is a fascist empire, an empire of peace, an empire of civilization and humanity.

There was a period in which I had 14 women and I'd take three or four every evening, one after the other ... that gives you an idea of my sexuality.

[to his mistress Clara Petacci] Your flesh has got me - from now on I'm a slave to your flesh ... I have a feverish desire for your delicious little body which I want to kiss all over. And you must adore my body, your giant.

[on the Italian Social Republic] I shall have much to say at the tribunal and I will show that in these 18 months I saved Italy from worse disasters.

Death has become a friend who no longer frightens me. Death is a gift from God to those who have suffered too much.

[his last words] Shoot me in the chest.

I should be pleased, I suppose, that Hitler has carried out a revolution on our lines. But they are Germans. So they will end by ruining our idea.

Race? It is a feeling, not a reality. Ninety-five per cent, at least. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today ... National pride has no need of the delirium of race.

Democracy is talking itself to death. The people do not know what they want; they do not know what is the best for them. There is too much foolishness, too much lost motion. I have stopped the talk and the nonsense. I am a man of action. Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day.

I am not here to renounce even a square meter of state territory. We will go back to war for this. And we will rebel against anyone for this. Where the Italian flag flew, the Italian flag will return. And where it has not been lowered, now that I am here, no one will have it lowered. I have said these things to the Führer.

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

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.

It is the state which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity.

Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant.

Fascist education is moral, physical, social, and military: it aims to create a complete and harmoniously developed human, a fascist one according to our views.

The definition of fascism is the marriage of corporation and state.

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, we Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own ideology and to enforce it with all the energy of which we are capable.

The history of saints is mainly the history of insane people.

It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.

A nation of spaghetti eaters cannot restore Roman civilization!

Every anarchist is a baffled dictator.

We have buried the putrid corpse of liberty.

Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.

Let us have a dagger between our teeth, a bomb in our hand, and an infinite scorn in our hearts.

We become strongest, I feel, when we have no friends upon whom to lean, or to look for moral guidance.

The function of a citizen and a soldier are inseparable.

Fascism, the more 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.

The truth is that men are tired of liberty.