It’s a rather flamboyant, but famous, translation of a quote of Antonio Gramsci:

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.

Italian original:

La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi piú svariati.

A more literaral English translation:

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.