Benito Mussolini: Quotes about people

“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

Speech (21 June 1921), Ion Smeaton Munro, Through Fascism to World Power: A History of the Revolution in Italy, 27 January 2008 http://books.google.com/books?id=DML39RmvsmYC&pg=PA120&dq=%E2%80%9CWe+deny+your+internationalism%22+mussolini&lr=&sig=gTHVLgfaIKPCn_jW8f0phjDKrAI,
1920s

People , History , Sense , Passion

“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 book The Doctrine of Fascism

"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
1930s

Life , Death , War , People

“Speeches made to the people are essential to the arousing of enthusiasm for a war.”

Benito Mussolini

As quoted in Talks with Mussolini, Emil Ludwig, Boston, MA, Little, Brown and Company (1933). Mussolini’s interview was in 1932.
1930s

War , People

“The Fascist State has never tried to create its own God, as at one moment Robespierre and the wildest extremists of the Convention tried to do; nor does it vainly seek to obliterate religion from the hearts of men as does Bolshevism: Fascism respects the God of the ascetics, of the saints, of the heroes, and also God as seen and prayed to by the simple and primitive heart of the people.”

Benito Mussolini book The Doctrine of Fascism

The Doctrine of Fascism, June 1932. Quoted in Charles Floyd Delzell, Mediterranean Fascism, 1919-45 Springer, 1971
1930s

Men , God , People , Religion

“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

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,
1900s

Men , Hate , People , School

“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.”

Benito Mussolini

Written statement (1934), quoted in Fascism and Democracy in the Human Mind : A Bridge Between Mind and Society (2006) by Israel W. Charny, p. 23
Variant translation: The truth is that men are tired of liberty.
Attributed to Mussolini in Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg (2007) by Derek Swannson, p. 507; similar remarks are also attributed to Adolf Hitler
A similar statement appears in "Forza e Consenso" Gerarchia magazine (March 1923), excerpted in Cos'è il fascismo https://www.liberliber.it/online/autori/autori-m/benito-mussolini/cose-il-fascismo/ (1983)
1930s

Men , People , Truth

“War is the normal state of the people.”

Benito Mussolini

"Duce (1922-42)" in TIME magazine (August 2, 1943)
1940s

War , People

“Fortunately the Italian people has not yet accustomed itself to eat many times a day, and possessing a modest level of living, it feels deficiency and suffering less.”

Benito Mussolini

Carol F. Helstosky, Garlic and Oil: Food and Politics in Italy (2006)
Undated

People , Feeling , Suffering , Time

“Comrade Tassinari was right in stating that for a revolution to be great, for it to make a deep impression on the life of the people and on history, it must be a social revolution.”

Benito Mussolini

Speech to the National Corporative Council (November 14, 1933), in A Primer of Italian Fascism, edited/translated by Jeffrey T. Schnapp (2000) p.163.
1930s

Life , People , History

“We go to battle against the plutocratic and reactionary democracies of the west… This gigantic struggle is nothing other than a phase in the logical development of our revolution; it is the struggle of peoples that are poor but rich in workers against the exploiters who hold on ferociously to the monopoly off all the riches and all the gold of the earth…”

Benito Mussolini

“Declaration of War on France and England,” Mussolini Speech on June 10, 1940
1940s

People , Democracy

“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

People , History

“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

People , Education , Effort

“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

World , People