“The vote is the expression of an individual opinion; it is not an organic synthesis, but a mechanical sum. Democracy is the sum of everything anti-popular, anti-social, and anti-patriotic.”
— Fernando Pessoa
"During a high society dinner in Venice in 1895, d'Annunzio proposed a toast to "putrefaction" and to the destruction of the world political order and the advent of a new one. "I drink," he exclaimed, "for the roses that will flow from the blood."