Benito Mussolini

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

"State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management."

"Religion is a species of mental disease. It has always had a pathological reaction on mankind."

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

"Marx was the greatest of all theorists of socialism."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"The Bible and morals called Christian are two cadavers."

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

"Religion is a psychic disease of the brain."

"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."

"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."

"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."

""Religious man" is an abnormality and "religion" is the certain cause of epidemic diseases of the mind which require the care of alienists."

"For us the national flag is a rag to be planted on a dunghill. There are only two fatherlands in the world: that of the exploited and that of the exploiters."

"The rapacious property-owning American bourgeoisie admits no limits, possesses no scruples and does not share the fears and the cowardice of our bourgeoisie. [They are] violent, absolute criminal. When they feel the need, they simply stain their hands with proletarian blood. They lack any human sense. They are only interested in exploitation."

"Socialism is not Arcadian and peaceful. We do not believe in the sacredness of human life."

"Socialism has to remain a terrifying and a majestic thing. If we follow this line, we shall be able to face our enemies."

"The law of socialism is that of the desert: a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye. Socialism is a rude and bitter truth, which was born in the conflict of opposing forces and in violence. Socialism is war, and woe to those who are cowardly in war. They will be defeated."

"What does it matter to the proletarian to understand socialism as one understands a theorem? And is socialism perhaps reducible to a theorem? We want to believe in it; we must believe in it. Humanity needs a credo. It is faith that moves mountains because it gives the illusion that mountains move. Illusion is perhaps the only reality of life."

"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."

"You cannot get rid of me because I am and always will be a socialist. You hate me because you still love me."

"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."

"It is blood which moves the wheels of history."

"The new society cannot get out of the involucrum of the old society, except by smashing it to pieces; two conceptions, two classes, two worlds will contend for primacy, and only force will compel the weaker to disappear. For this reason, we socialists of the first school, Marxist and catastrophic, if you wish, explain to ourselves the partial violence of to-day and the violence of to-morrow… Do not call us prophets of massacre if we present the possibility that the socialist revolution will have insurrectional episodes. It is puerile to think that such a radical displacement of interests, such a profound transformation of habits can be accomplished without violent conflicts."

"The dangerous persons for the socialist movement are not the intellectuals, but those who are not convinced of socialism. And all those who call themselves socialists without knowing why they are socialists."

"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."

"Although we can discuss the question of what socialism is, what is its program and what are its tactics, one thing is obvious: the official Italian Socialist Party has been reactionary and absolutely conservative."

"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."

"We want an extraordinary heavy taxation, with a progressive character, on capital, that will represent an authentic partial expropriation of all wealth; seizures of all assets of religious congregations and suppression of all the ecclesiastic Episcopal revenues, in what constitutes an enormous deficit of the nation and a privilege for a minority; revisions of all contracts made by the war ministers and seizure of 85% of all war profits."

"Lenin is an artist who has worked men, as other artists have worked marble or metals. But men are harder than stone and less malleable than iron. There is no masterpiece. The artist has failed. The task was superior to his capacities."

"When dealing with such a race as Slavic - inferior and barbarian - we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy [...] We should not be afraid of new victims [...] The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps: I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians."

"Three cheers for the war. Three cheers for Italy's war and three cheers for war in general. Peace is hence absurd or rather a pause in war."

"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."

"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,…"

"I know the Communists. I know them because some of them are my children…"

"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."

"[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.""

"To-morrow, Fascists and communists, both persecuted by the police, may arrive at an agreement, sinking their differences until the time comes to share the spoils. I realise that though there are no political affinities between us, there are plenty of intellectual affinities. Like them, we believe in the necessity for a centralised and unitary state, imposing an iron discipline on everyone, but with the difference that they reach this conclusion through the idea of class, we through the idea of the nation."

"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."

"Christ is dead and his teachings moribund."

"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."

"The measures adopted to restore public order are: First of all, the elimination of the so-called subversive elements. ...They were elements of disorder and subversion. On the morrow of each conflict I gave the categorical order to confiscate the largest possible number of weapons of every sort and kind. This confiscation, which continues with the utmost energy, has given satisfactory results."

"Tell America that I like her, like her because she is strong, simple, and direct. I wish Italy to be the same and shall try to make her so."

"What is freedom? There is no such thing as absolute freedom!"

"Liberty is a duty, not a right."

"Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter's prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes' excellent little book, The End of Laissez-Faire (1926) might, so far as it goes, serve as a useful introduction to fascist economics. There is scarcely anything to object to in it and there is much to applaud."