"It is blood which moves the wheels of history!"
- Speech at Parma by Mussolini
"Struggle is at the bottom of everything, because life is full of contrasts. There is love and hate, black and white, night and day, good and evil..."
- Benito Mussolini, "The Task of Fascism"
"The Italian Fatherland has found herself again, from the north to the south, from the mainland to those generous islands which shall no more be forgotten, from the metropolis of Rome to the industrious colonies of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Gentlemen, do not throw useless words at the Nation; fifty-two requests to speak on my lists is too much. Let us work, rather, with pure hearts and ready minds to assure the prosperity and the greatness of the Fatherland."- From Mussolini's first speech to the Cabinet, 16 Nov. 1922
"Perhaps the most eloquent tribute that could be paid him was the great respect and fear demonstrated by Mussolini in the years following the Fiume adventure... Everyone from Mussolini to Premier Franceso Saverio Nitti realized that D'Annunzio could have led a successful march on Rome during his reign at Fiume..."
- Michael A. Ledeen, 'The First Duce'
"We don't know what Nitti's government is thinking. All we can say is that, if necessary, thousands of volunteers - the best of Italy's youth - will be with D'Annunzio."
- Mussolini's "Long Live Fiume!," in Il Popolo d'Italia
"The speech of the crown did not take a clear position against the subversive forces which were menacing nothing less than our whole national unity. It forgot the question of Fiume - a torch which held out a flame for our national spirit."- Mussolini, 'My Autobiography'Image: Mussolini visiting D'Annunzio in 1925
"It stands at the very entrance of the Foro Mussolini and it will immortalize for eternity the fortunes of the fatherland, restored by the Leader, the excellent and unconquered spirit of the Leader regarding the fatherland, the immovable loyalty of the citizens to the Leader, and the outstanding achievements of Fascism."
- Codex Fori Mussolini, 27 Oct. 1932, inscribed by Aurelio Giuseppe Amatucci
Image: Monolithic obelisk at the Foro Mussolini. The Codex Fori Mussolini was hidden at its base, and only recently recovered.
"To celebrate the birth of Rome means to celebrate our kind of civilization, it means to exalt our history and our race, it means to lean firmly on the past in order to project better onto the future."
- Benito Mussolini, "Past and Future," in Il Popolo d'Italia
"Fascism denies that numbers, by the mere fact of being numbers, can direct human society; it denies that these numbers can govern by means of periodical consultations; it affirms also the fertilizing, beneficient and unassailable inequality of men, who cannot be leveled through an extrinsic and mechanical process such as universal suffrage."
- Benito Mussolini, second part of "The Doctrine of Fascism"
"It is thus that the fascist loves and accepts life, ignores and disdains suicide; understands life as a duty, a lifting up, a conquest; something to be filled in and sustained on a high plane; a thing that has to be lived through for its own sake, but above all for the sake of others near and far, present and future."
- Benito Mussolini, second part of 'The Doctrine of Fascism'
"Fascism, sitting on the right, could also have sat on the mountain of the center ... These words in any case do not have a fixed and unchanged meaning: they do have a variable subject to location, time and spirit. We don't give a damn about these empty terminologies and we despise those who are terrorized by these words."
- Mussolini, "Luoghi comuni. Destra e sinistra," Il Popolo d'Italia, 29 July 1922
"Camicie nere, sono venuto qui tra voi prima di tutto per saggiare la temperatura della vostra fede."
- Mussolini, in an early speech
