Giuseppe Garibaldi

"In our own day classics have been dethroned without being replaced. But throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries our statesmen were so brought up that they thought of Rome as the hearth of their political civilization, where their predecessor Cicero had denounced Catiline; where the models of their own eloquence and statecraft, as taught them at Eton, Harrow and Winchester, had been practised and brought to perfection. And, therefore, the ruins of the Forum were as familiar, as sacred, and as moving to Russell and to Gladstone as to Mazzini and Garibaldi themselves. This was a prime fact in the history of the Risorgimento."

"I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor provisions; I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country in his heart, and not with his lips only, follow me."

"Qui si fa l'Italia o si muore."

"Roma o morte!"

"Il giorno in cui i contadini saranno educati nel vero, i tiranni e gli schiavi saranno impossibili sulla terra."

"Obbedisco."

"I am a Christian and I speak to Christians—I am a good Christian and speak to good Christians. I love and venerate the religion of Christ because Christ came into the world to deliver humanity from slavery for which God has not created it. But the Pope, who wishes all men to be slaves—who demands of the powerful of the earth fetters and chains for Italians—the Pope king does not know Christ. He lies to his religion. Among the Indians, two geniuses are recognized and adored: that of good and that of evil. Well, the Genius of Evil for Italy is the Pope king. Let no one misunderstand my words—let no one confound Popery with Christianity—the Religion of Liberty with the avaricious and sanguinary Politics of Slavery."

"As to his Goddess Reason, I understand by it simply an adoption of what are called on the continent the principles of the French Revolution. These we neither want nor warmly relish in England."

"We who have seen Italia in the throes, Half risen but to be hurled to ground, and now, Like a ripe field of wheat where once drove plough, All bounteous as she is fair, we think of those Who blew the breath of life into her frame: Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi: Three: Her Brain, her Soul, her Sword; and set her free ruinous discords, with one lustrous aim."

"All in all, there is no great figure of modern times so wholly admirable."

"He evoked from the people and even from the politicians a personal devotion almost without parallel in modern history; again and again he chose the right course by instinct; and he showed himself the greatest general that Italy has ever produced."

""Ein Mensch lebt, um den Massen nützlich zu sein. Und der Wert eines Menschen wird bestimmt durch den Nutzen, den er seinen Mitmenschen bringt. Geboren werden, leben, essen, trinken und schließlich sterben"