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Benito Mussolini Quotes
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Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician and journalist who was the leader of the National Fascist Party . He ruled Italy as Prime Minister from 1922 to 1943; he constitutionally led the country until 1925, when he dropped the pretense of democracy and established a dictatorship.

Known as Il Duce , Mussolini was the founder of Italian Fascism. In 1912, Mussolini had been a leading member of the National Directorate of the Italian Socialist Party , but was expelled from the PSI for advocating military intervention in World War I, in opposition to the party's stance on neutrality. Mussolini served in the Royal Italian Army during the war until he was wounded and discharged in 1917. Mussolini denounced the PSI, his views now centering on nationalism instead of socialism and later founded the fascist movement which came to oppose egalitarianism and class conflict, instead advocating "revolutionary nationalism" transcending class lines. Following the March on Rome in October 1922, Mussolini became the youngest Prime Minister in Italian history until the appointment of Matteo Renzi in February 2014. After removing all political opposition through his secret police and outlawing labor strikes, Mussolini and his followers consolidated their power through a series of laws that transformed the nation into a one-party dictatorship. Within five years, Mussolini had established dictatorial authority by both legal and extraordinary means and aspired to create a totalitarian state. In 1929, Mussolini signed the Lateran Treaty with the Vatican, ending decades of struggle between the Italian state and the Papacy, and recognized the independence of Vatican City.

After the Abyssinia Crisis of 1935–1936, Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in the Second Italo–Ethiopian War. The invasion was condemned by the Western powers and was answered with economic sanctions against Italy. Relations between Germany and Italy improved due to Hitler's support of the invasion. In 1936, Mussolini surrendered Austria to the German sphere of influence, signed the treaty of cooperation with Germany and proclaimed the creation of a Rome–Berlin Axis. From 1936 through 1939, Mussolini provided huge amounts of military support to Franco's forces in the Spanish Civil War. This active intervention further distanced Italy from France and Britain. Mussolini had sought to delay a major war in Europe, but Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, resulting in declarations of war by France and the UK and the start of World War II. On 10 June 1940—with the Fall of France imminent—Italy officially entered the war on the side of Germany, though Mussolini was aware that Italy did not have the military capacity and resources to carry out a long war with the British Empire. He believed that after the imminent French armistice, Italy could gain territorial concessions from France, and he could then concentrate his forces on a major offensive in North Africa, where British and Commonwealth forces were outnumbered by Italian forces. However, the British government refused to accept proposals for a peace that would involve accepting Axis victories in Eastern and Western Europe; plans for an invasion of the UK did not proceed and the war continued. In October 1940, Mussolini sent Italian forces into Greece, starting the Greco-Italian War. The invasion failed and the following Greek counter-offensive pushed the Italians back to occupied Albania. The Greek debacle and simultaneous defeats against the British in North Africa reduced Italy to dependence on Germany.

Beginning in June 1941, Mussolini sent Italian forces to participate in the invasion of the Soviet Union, and Italy declared war on the United States in December. In 1943, Italy suffered one disaster after another: by February the Red Army had completely destroyed the Italian Army in Russia; in May the Axis collapsed in North Africa; on 9 July the Allies invaded Sicily; and by the 16th it became clear the German summer offensive in the USSR had failed. As a consequence, early on 25 July, the Grand Council of Fascism passed a motion of no confidence for Mussolini; later that day the King dismissed him as head of government and had him placed in custody, appointing Pietro Badoglio to succeed him as Prime Minister. On 12 September 1943, Mussolini was rescued from captivity in the Gran Sasso raid by German paratroopers and Waffen-SS commandos led by Major Otto-Harald Mors.

Adolf Hitler, after meeting with the rescued former dictator, then put Mussolini in charge of a puppet regime in northern Italy, the Italian Social Republic , informally known as the Salò Republic. In late April 1945, in the wake of near total defeat, Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci attempted to flee to Switzerland, but both were captured by Italian communist partisans and summarily executed by firing squad on 28 April 1945 near Lake Como. His body was then taken to Milan, where it was hung upside down at a service station to publicly confirm his demise.

✵ 29. July 1883 – 28. April 1945
Benito Mussolini photo
Benito Mussolini: 127 quotes38 likes

Benito Mussolini Quotes

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

Benito Mussolini

As quoted in &quot; Eja! Eja! Alala!&quot; in TIME magazine (23 July 1923) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,716187,00.html <br class="br">1920s

“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

Diuturna [The Lasting] (1921) as quoted in Rational Man : A Modern Interpretation of Aristotelian Ethics (1962) by H. B. Veatch
1920s

“Fascism was not the protector of any one class, but a supreme regulator of the relations between all citizens of a state.”

Benito Mussolini book My Autobiography

My Autobiography , New York: NY, Charles Scribner’s Sons (1928) p. 280
1920s

“Some still ask of us: what do you want? We answer with three words that summon up our entire program. Here they are…Italy, Republic, Socialization... Socialization is no other than the implantation of Italian Socialism…”

Benito Mussolini

Speech given by Mussolini to a group of Milanese Fascist veterans (October 14, 1944), quoted in Revolutionary Fascism, Erik Norling, Lisbon, Finis Mundi Press (2011) pp.119-120.
1940s

“It may be expected that this will be a century of authority, a century of the Left, a century of Fascism.”

Benito Mussolini

From Jane Soames’s authorized translation of Mussolini’s “The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,” Hogarth Press, London, (1933), p. 20. http://historyuncensored.wixsite.com/history-uncensored http://media.wix.com/ugd/927b40_c1ee26114a4d480cb048f5f96a4cc68f.pdf Julius Evola reproduced the original Italian as &quot;un secolo della &#x27;Destra&quot; (&quot;a century of the right&quot;); see Evola, Fascismo e Terzo Reich. Several English translations agree with Evola&#x27;s wording, including one published by the Fascist government in 1935 and transcribed online. http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm <br class="br">Attributed

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

Benito Mussolini

This quote spread rapidly in the United States after appearing in a column by Molly Ivins (24 November 2002). It is repeated often and sometimes attributed to the &quot;Fascism&quot; entry in the 1932 Enciclopedia Italiana. However hard copies of the 1932 Enciclopedia Italiana exist in numerous libraries and the alleged quote is not in the text, nor is there anything that would support the alleged quote. A vaguely similar statement does appear in Doctrine of Fascism. <br class="br">We are, in other words, a state which controls all forces acting in nature. We control political forces, we control moral forces, we control economic forces, therefore we are a full-blown Corporative state. <br class="br">The same document explains that the &quot;corporations&quot; (corporazioni) on which the Fascist state rested were its own creations, modeled on guild associations and not private companies, which Italian normally calls società. For details see &quot;Mussolini on the Corporate State&quot; http://www.publiceye.org/fascist/corporatism.html by Chip Berlet. <br class="br">Attributed

“Standing by me and helping my work as newspaper man were the Fascisti. They were composed of revolutionary spirits who believed in intervention. They were youths—the students of the universities, the socialist syndicalists—destroying faith in Karl Marx by their ideals.”

Benito Mussolini book My Autobiography

My Autobiography, New York, C. Scribner's Sons, 1928. Reprinted in Benito Mussolini, My Rise And Fall, Volumes 1-2 Da Capo Press, 1998 (p.40).
1920s

“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

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.
1910s

“It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. That is what I shall do.”

Benito Mussolini

Remark to Galeazzo Ciano (11 April 1940), quoted in Famous Lines : A Columbia Dictionary of Familiar Quotations (1997) by Robert Andrews. p. 330
1940s

“Fascism denies that numbers, as such, can direct human society. It denies that numbers can govern by means of periodical consultations: It asserts the unavoidable fruitful and beneficent inequality of men who cannot be leveled by any such mechanical and extrinsic device as universal suffrage.”

Benito Mussolini book The Doctrine of Fascism

"The Doctrine of Fascism", June 1932. Quoted in Marco Piraino, Stefano Fiorito, Fascist identity : political project and doctrine of fascism. Lulu.com, 2009. (p. 107)
1930s

“Yet the Fascist State is unique, and an original creation. It is not reactionary, but revolutionary, in that it anticipates the solution of the universal political problems which elsewhere have to be settled in the political field by the rivalry of parties, the excessive power of the Parliamentary regime and the irresponsibility of political assemblies.”

Benito Mussolini

As quoted in “The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism”, Jane Soames translator, Hogarth Press, London, authorized edition (1933) p. 23
1930s

“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

As quoted in Italy: A Modern History, Denis Mack Smith, University of Michigan Press (1959) p. 352, Pact of Pacification, 1921
1920s

“I am making superhuman efforts to educate this people. When they have learnt to obey, they will believe what I tell them.”

Benito Mussolini

As quoted in The Tyrants: 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption (2006) by Clive Foss ISBN 1905204965
Undated

“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

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
1920s

“God does not exist—religion in science is an absurdity, in practice an immorality and in men a disease.”

Benito Mussolini

“Religion: Benito a Christian?” Time magazine (August 25, 1924)
1920s

“Science is now in the process of destroying religious dogma. The dogma of the divine creation is recognized as absurd.”

Benito Mussolini

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.
1900s

“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

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.
1910s

“Inside every anarchist is a failed dictator.”

Benito Mussolini

Quote from The Golden Book Magazine Vol. 16 (1932), p. 206 translated from what Mussolini said to Emil Ludwig (Colloqui con Mussolini, 1932)
1930s

“My Autobiography, New York, C. Scribner's Sons, 1928. Reprinted in Benito Mussolini, My Rise And Fall, Volumes 1-2 Da Capo Press, 1998 (p.40).”

Benito Mussolini

“The socialist revolution was a pure and simple question of ‘force.’… Between the [bourgeoisie and the proletariat] no accord is possible. One must disappear. The weaker will be ‘eliminated.’ The class struggle is therefore a question of ‘force.”

Benito Mussolini

As quoted in The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism, A. James Gregor, New York and London, The Free Press (1969) p. 106
Undated

“The Doctrine of Fascism, June 1932. Quoted in Charles Floyd Delzell, Mediterranean Fascism, 1919-45 Springer, 1971”

Benito Mussolini

“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 book My Autobiography

1920s
Source: My Autobiography (1928)

“The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity.”

Benito Mussolini

My Autobiography by Mussolini, New York: NY, Charles Scribner’s Sons (1928) p. 280.
1920s

“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

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.
1920s

“[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

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, Oxford Univ. Press, 1975, p. 193, n.5, Pact of Pacification, 1921
1920s

“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

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
1910s

“The outbreak of a socialist revolution in one country will cause the others to imitate it or so to strengthen the proletariat as to prevent its national bourgeoisie from attempting any armed intervention.”

Benito Mussolini

As quoted in The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution: The Origins of Ideological Polarization in the 20th Century, Jacob Talmon, University of California Press (1981) p. 487
Undated

“It was inevitable that I should become a Socialist ultra, a Blanquist, indeed a communist. I carried about a medallion with Marx’s head on it in my pocket. I think I regarded it as a sort of talisman… [Marx] had a profound critical intelligence and was in some sense even a prophet.”

Benito Mussolini

As quoted in Talks with Mussolini , Emil Ludwig, Boston, MA, Little, Brown and Company (1933) p. 38. Interview between March 23 and April 4, 1932, at the Palazzo di Venezia in Rome https://archive.org/details/talkswithmussoli006557mbp <br class="br">1930s

“To-day we can affirm that the capitalistic method of production is out of date. So is the doctrine of laissez-faire, the theoretical basis of capitalism… To-day we are taking a new and decisive step in the path of revolution. A revolution, in order to be great, must be a social revolution.”

Benito Mussolini

Speech on November 14, 1933 as quoted in Under the Axe of Fascism, Gaetano Salvemini, London, UK, Victor Gollancz Ltd. (1936) p. 131
1930s

“Shoot me in the chest.”

Benito Mussolini

Mussolini's last words (28 April 1945), as quoted in "Mussolini" by Peter Neville,(2004) p. 195
1940s

“Believe, obey, fight.”

Benito Mussolini

Mussolini and Fascism (2003) by Patricia Knight, p. 46
Undated

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

Benito Mussolini

“Men do not move mountains; it is only necessary to create the illusion that mountains move.”

Benito Mussolini

As quoted in The Great Illusion, 1900-1914, Oron J. Hale, Harper & Row (1971) p. 109
Undated

“With the unleashing of a mighty clash of peoples, the bourgeoisie is playing its last card and calls forth on the world scene that which Karl Marx called the sixth great power: the socialist revolution.”

Benito Mussolini

As quoted in Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism, Ernst Nolte, New York: NY, Holt, Rinehart and Winston (1966) p. 156. Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini, V, p. 121
Undated

“These men are not made of the same stuff as the Francis Drakes and the other magnificent adventurers who created the empire. These, after all, are the tired sons of a long line of rich men, and they will lose their empire.”

Benito Mussolini

Remarks to Count Ciano (11 January 1939) after meeting Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, quoted in Malcolm Muggeridge (ed.), Ciano's Diary, 1939–1943 (1947), pp. 9–10
1930s

“A revolutionist is born, not made.”

Benito Mussolini

Talks with Mussolini, interviewer Emil Ludwig, Boston: MA, Little, Brown and Company, 1933, p. 66. Interview took place between March 23 and April 4, 1932
1930s

“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

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

“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

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

“Religion is a psychic disease of the brain.”

Benito Mussolini

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

“Religious morality shows the original stigmata of authoritarianism precisely because it pretends to be the revelation of divine authority.”

Benito Mussolini

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

“The Bible and morals called Christian are two cadavers.”

Benito Mussolini

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

“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

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

“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

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

“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

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

“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

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

“The struggle against the religious absurdity is more than ever a necessity today.”

Benito Mussolini

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

“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

1930s
Source: Letter to Hitler, quoted in Winston Churchill's The Gathering Storm

“World Jewry has been, for sixteen years, despite our policy, an irreconcilable enemy of Fascism. In Italy our policy has led, in the Semitic elements, to what can today be called a true rush to board the ship.”

Benito Mussolini

Speech held in Trieste (September 18, 1938) <br class="br">Source: Il discorso di Trieste, archivioluce, 2021-01-04 https://www.archivioluce.com/2019/09/18/il-discorso-di-trieste/,

“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

Speech held in Trieste (September 18, 1938) <br class="br">Source: Il discorso di Trieste, archivioluce, 2021-01-04 https://www.archivioluce.com/2019/09/18/il-discorso-di-trieste/,