“The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide; he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest.”

Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State — a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values — interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.

At every hour of every day, I can tell you on which page of which book each school child in Italy is studying.

The new cycle which begins with the ninth year of the Fascist regime places the alternative in even greater relief either we or they, either their ideas or ours, either our State or theirs!

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

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

Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter’s prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes’ excellent little book,

Life which should be high and full, lived for oneself, but not above all for others those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after.

Fascism is a religion. The twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism.

Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State… Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual.

The State, in fact, as the universal ethical will, is the creator of right.

I should be pleased, I suppose, that Hitler has carried out a revolution on our lines. But they are Germans. So they will end by ruining our idea.

The Italian people are disciplined, silent and calm, they work and know that there is a Government which governs, and know, above all, that if this Government hits cruelly certain sections of the Italian people, it does not so out of caprice, but from the supreme necessity of national order.

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.

Fascism accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with the state’s.

Democratic regimes may be defined as those in which, every now and then, the people are given the illusion of being sovereign, while the true sovereignty in actual fact resides in other forces which are sometimes irresponsible and secret.

Liberty is a duty, not a right.

I will accept no commission that would tend to create a rivalry with Grant.

Masturbation is not only an expression of self-regard: it is also the natural emotional outlet of those who…have already accepted as inevitable the wide gulf between their real futures and the expectations of their fantasies.

Accept what is good. Reject and forget what is not. This is intelligent living.

He who is able to accept everything gladly from the Lord – including darkness, dryness, flatness – and completely disregard self is he who lives for Him.

In the first period religious life appears as a form of discipline which the individual or a whole people must accept as an unconditional command without any rational understanding of the ultimate meaning and purpose of that command.

This was the reason why I decided, as far as possible, not to accept money from the government.

With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you’ve fallen into good hands – someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.

But the other guys that you have have to accept their leadership. They have to respond to it. That’s the chemistry that you never know how that is going to happen.