Skip to content

T[he clerks who are blackmailing the State, the politicking socialists, and the full-belly fanatics are not part of the nation. Nationality is a spiritual fact, not a physical phenomenon. It is not people who are born and live in the national territory who belong to the nation, but those who feel spiritually bound to it.

— Alfredo Rocco

Another quote →

Source, in full

“L'amnistia, il disgregamento dello Stato e gli stranieri d'Italia” (“Amnesty, the disintegration of the state and foreigners of Italy”) (1915) in Alfredo Rocco’s Scritti e discorsi politici, Milan: Giuffrè. Vol. 1, (1938) p. 238

More quotes by Alfredo Rocco

Woe betide the Italian people if, while others are engaging in super-imperialism, they do not at least engage in nationalism!

In sociology, just as in biology, uniformity and immobility are death.

The nation that refuses to behave nationalistically, when all the other nations are doing so, is fatally destined to die.

The stronger and more powerful a state, the highest and richer the life of its inhabitants.

Fascism on the other hand, faces squarely the problem of the right of the state and of the duty of individuals. Individual rights are only recognized insofar as they are implied in the rights of the state. In this preeminence of duty we find the highest ethical value of fascism.

The Political Doctrine of Fascism (1925)

All Alfredo Rocco quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Alfredo Rocco (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.