Great Throughts Treasury

"War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it."

"War cannot be waged without hating the enemy. War cannot be waged without hating the enemy from morning to night, in all the hours of the day and night, without spreading hatred and without making it an intrinsic part of one?s self. We must rid ourselves once and for all of false sentimentality. We are confronted by beasts, by barbarians. Rome which yet was merciful after victory was pitiless when the existence of the Roman people was at stake. We must therefore fight with the greatest vigor against all those influences which are trying to weaken our spirit by giving the false picture of an Italian people capable only of producing lovely things."

"War is the normal state of the people"

"War is to man what maternity is to a woman. From a philosophical and doctrinal viewpoint, I do not believe in perpetual peace."

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

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

"We have buried the putrid corpse of liberty."

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

"Yet if anyone cares to read over the now crumbling minutes giving an account of the meetings at which the Italian Fasci di Combattimento were founded, he will find not a doctrine but a series of pointers? It may be objected that this program implies a return to the guilds (corporazioni). No matter... I therefore hope this assembly will accept the economic claims advanced by national syndicalism."

"You know what I think about violence. For me it is profoundly moral -more moral than compromises and transactions."

"Youth is a malady of which one becomes cured a little every day."