Giuseppe Garibaldi

I do not come to impose upon you my will, but to cause yours to be respected.

Let any man go to the hospital—what cruel wounds, what horrific sights! and how cheerfully some of the sufferers bear their troubles.

Truly many of the common soldiers of this patriot army might take rank beside them.

The Two Sicilies, which have been redeemed by Italian blood, and which have freely elected me their dictator, form an integral part of one and indivisible Italy under her constitutional king, Victor Emanuel, and his descendants.

It is with true respect and love that I present myself to this noble and imposing centre of the Italian population, which many centuries of despotism have not been able to humiliate or to induce to bow their knees at the sight of tyranny.

Victor Emanuel, the model of all sovereigns, will impress upon his descendants the duty that they owe to the prosperity of a people which has elected him for their chief with enthusiastic devotion.

It is to be hoped that he will, as soon as may be, commence the work of raising the Neapolitan people out of some of the absurd superstitions which have always kept them in ignorance, and made them the serfs of juggling priests.

Can a people appreciate and derive much benefit from free institutions so long as they permit their senses to be cheated by such a palpable swindle as this?

People of Palermo, I thank you in the name of Italy for your resistance.

You despised their counsels, and I thank you for it, you invincible people of the barricades.

The people of Palermo, who showed no fear in face of those who bombarded their city, have shown themselves recently equally regardless of fear in face of corrupt men, who want to lead them astray.

They are admirable, and in themselves amount to a beneficial revolution; but the better and the more sweeping the changes that are introduced, the greater the necessity for some established government.

The latter were a sect to defend a vile political creed, and inflict chastisement on those who opposed it; but the former are banded together to assert the sacred rights of liberty.

A system was pursued that has been characterized as a perpetual violation of all law, and a practical denial of Christianity.

Revolution is said to turn the dregs uppermost; yet the appearance and manner of those who now appear on the scene contradict the common proverb.

In their very attitude, there is an air of self-respect and independence to which I have long been a stranger.

No; all this has passed away, and I meet erect, independent men.

The Neapolitans now reason and talk like men, and there is a degree of self-restraint about them which is in the highest degree creditable after the sufferings to which they have been so long exposed.

It is clear that the intellect of the country has for years been out of it, or in seclusion, or in imprisonment.

I looked at him as if expecting to find that he was turned into a brute beast, for it was a den for a wild animal, not a chamber for a Christian man, in a country teeming with Christ's ministers, and where the holy Apostolic Catholic…

People of Palermo, with whom I have shared fatigues, perils and glory, I am once more among you.

If I had followed their advice, I should not have crossed the Straits and restored seven millions of men to Italy.

But as long as there are chains to be broken in Italy, I will follow my course or bury my bones there.

I have yet to thank you, as well as the brave national militia, for the faith you have placed in me and in the destinies of our country.

If events take such a course as we may anticipate, the Pope's temporal power will soon be entirely gone, and his respectability in the eyes of the world will be only such and so much as can be bought with two millions of dollars a year…