It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. That is what I shall do.

The fate of nations is intimately bound up with their powers of reproduction. All nations and all empires first felt decadence gnawing at them when their birth rate fell off.

The Government has been compelled to levy taxes which unavoidably hit large sections of the population. 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.

It is my conviction that in time of war, when the cannon speaks with its powerful voice, the less we speak the better.

On the morrow of each conflict I gave the categorical order to confiscate the largest possible number of weapons of every sort and kind.

Yes, a dictator can be loved. Provided that the masses fear him at the same time. The crowd love strong men. The crowd is like a woman.

Race? It is a feeling, not a reality. Ninety-five per cent, at least. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today.... National pride has no need of the delirium of race.