Goebbels Quotes

When I sit near the ocean in the morning and write my verses and breathe the salty wind which is coming from the water, I rejoice in God and I am blissful, as I was as a child. ~ Joseph Goebbels

The modern man is necessarily a seeker of God, maybe a Man of Christ. ~ Joseph Goebbels

As I see it today, Hitler and Goebbels were in fact molded by the mob itself, guided by its yearnings and its daydreams. Of course, Goebbels and Hitler knew how to penetrate through to the instincts of their audiences; but in the deeper sense they derived their whole existence from these audiences. Certainly the masses roared to the beat set by Hitler's and Goebbels' baton; yet they were not the true conductors. The mob determined the theme. To compensate for misery, insecurity, unemployment, and hopelessness, this anonymous assemblage wallowed for hours at a time in obsessions, savagery and license. The personal unhappiness caused by the breakdown of the economy was replaced by a frenzy that demanded victims. By lashing out at their opponents and vilifying the Jews, they gave expression and direction to fierce primal passions. ~ Albert Speer

England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much-quoted message, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control - that, perhaps is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase. ~ George Orwell

It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion. ~ Joseph Goebbels

A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth ~ Joseph Goebbels

I wanted to tell him a story, but I didn't. It's a story about a Jew riding in a streetcar, in Germany during the Third Reich, reading Goebbels' paper, the Volkische Beobachter. A non-Jewish acquaintance sits down next to him and says, "Why do you read the Beobachter?" "Look," says the Jew, "I work in a factory all day. When I get home, my wife nags me, the children are sick, and there's no money for food. What should I do on my way home, read the Jewish newspaper? Pogrom in Romania' 'Jews Murdered in Poland.' 'New Laws against Jews.' No, sir, a half-hour a day, on the streetcar, I read the Beobachter. 'Jews the World Capitalists,' 'Jews Control Russia,' 'Jews Rule in England.' That's me they're talking about. A half-hour a day I'm somebody. Leave me alone, friend. ~ Milton Sanford Mayer

There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content. ~ Joseph Goebbels

I'd consider you a very very very beautiful monkey, than to call you ugly, to be honest. ~ Adrian Goebbels.

We shall reach our goal, when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Our starting point is not the individual:
We do not subscribe to the view that one should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, or clothe the naked ... Our objectives are different: We must have a healthy people in order to prevail in the world. ~ Joseph Goebbels

The experience of the individual has become the experience of the people, thanks solely to the camera. ~ Joseph Goebbels

I had a certain amount of skill as a dramatist, and Dr. Goebbels wanted me to use it ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

It is on this beautiful day that we celebrate the Fuhrers birthday and thank him for he is the only reason why Germany is still alive today ~ Joseph Goebbels

A fourteen-year-old lad crouching with his bazooka behind a ruined wall on a burned out street is worth more to the nation than ten intellectuals who attempt to prove that our chances now are nil. ~ Joseph Goebbels

If we are attacked we can only defend ourselves with guns not with butter. ~ Joseph Goebbels

The truth is always stronger than the lie. ~ Joseph Goebbels

If you tell the same lie enough times, people will believe it; and the bigger the lie, the better. ~ Joseph Goebbels

If you tell a lie, tell a big one. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Radio was used powerfully by Josef Goebbels to disseminate Nazi propaganda, and just as powerfully by King George VI to inspire the British people to fight invasion. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon

Christianity is not a religion for the masses, let alone for all. Cultivated by few and translated into deeds, it is one of the most splendid blossoms that can grow in the soul of a good man. ~ Joseph Goebbels

If the German people lay down their arms the whole of Eastern and Southern Europe, together with the Reich, will come under Russian occupation. Behind an iron curtain mass butcheries of people would begin. ~ Joseph Goebbels

The Jew is contrary to our being ... He desecrated our people, spit on our ideals, paralyzed the strength of the nation, made our customs rotten, and polluted the morale. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Mozart didn't need a scheme for his music. He played and sang with the heavenly lightness of a child. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Goebbels was known for his wit; Martha, for a time, considered him charming. "Infectious and delightful, eyes sparkling, voice soft, his speech witty and light, it is difficult to remember his cruelty, his cunning destructive talents." Her mother, Mattie, always enjoyed being seated next to Goebbels at banquets; Dodd considered him "one of the few men with a sense of humor in Germany ~ Erik Larson

I would like to be a parson on this island. Explain the Sermon on the Mount to ordinary people and let the world be the world. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Baritone, cultivated, rolling-out-smooth voice familiar to Reiss. 'This is Doktor Goebbels. ~ Philip K. Dick

Hypocrisy is the characteristic feature of the dying bourgeois epoch. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Man only honors what he conquers or defends. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Propaganda is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. If the means achieves the end then the means is good ... the new Ministry has no other aim than to unite the nation behind the ideal of the national revolution. ~ Joseph Goebbels

A media system wants ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity ~ Joseph Goebbels

His arrogance marked something new in the world, for this was the first war where the losers would write history instead of the victors, courtesy of the most efficient propaganda machine ever created (with all due respect to Joseph Goebbels and the Nazis, who never achieved global domination). Hollywood's high priests understood innately the observation of Milton's Satan, that it was better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven, better to be a villain, loser, or antihero than virtuous extra, so long as one commanded the bright lights of center stage. In this forthcoming Hollywood trompe l'oeil, all the Vietnamese of any side would come out poorly, herded into the roles of the poor, the innocent, the evil, or the corrupt. Our fate was not to be merely mute; we were to be struck dumb. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship-run state has its roots in the street. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today? ~ Joseph Goebbels

The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous. ~ Joseph Goebbels

A mother who is not everything for her children: a friend, a teacher, a confidant, a source of joy and founded pride, inducement and soothing, reconciliator, judge and forgiver, that mother obviously chose the wrong job. ~ Joseph Goebbels

There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the **er, and this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Every age that has historical status is governed by aristocracies.Aristocracy with the meaning - the best are ruling.Peoples do never govern themselves. That lunacy was concocted by liberalism. Behind its people's sovereignty the slyest cheaters are hiding, who don't want to be recognized. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Nazi propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels once remarked that if a lie is told often enough people will begin to see the lie as truth. ~ Paul Watson

The fatherland shall one day be like this: We're not all equal, but we're all brothers. ~ Joseph Goebbels

You can't change the masses. They will always be the same: dumb, gluttonous and forgetful. ~ Joseph Goebbels

He who cannot hate the devil cannot love God. ~ Joseph Goebbels

I'm so despondent about everything. Everything I try goes totally wrong. There's no escape from this hole here. I feel drained. So far, I still haven't found a real purpose in life. Sometimes, I'm afraid to get out of bed in the morning. There's nothing to get up for. ~ Joseph Goebbels

The next day, 25 February 1945, Goebbels warned, in an article in The Reich, that, if Germany surrendered, Stalin would immediately occupy south-eastern Europe, and 'an iron curtain would immediately fall on this huge territory, together with the vastness of the Soviet Union, and nations would be slaughtered behind it'. ~ Richard J. Evans

I believe in God. When everything collapses, we grip the last hold, we look from the secure haven how the godless society of the old, holy Europe falls apart. May the game begin. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Let me explain how such a thing might occasionally happen,' Goebbels said. 'All during the twelve years of the Weimar Republic our people were virtually in jail. Now our party is in charge and they are free again. When a man has been in jail for twelve years and he is suddenly freed, in his joy he may do something irrational, perhaps even brutal. Is that not a possibility in your country also?'
Ebbutt, his voice even, noted a fundamental difference in how England might approach such a scenario. 'If it should happen,' he said, 'we would throw the man right back in jail. ~ Erik Larson

They know a million tricks, those novelists. Take Doctor Goebbels; that's how he started out, writing fiction. Appeals to the base lusts that hide in everyone no matter how respectable on the surface. Yes, the novelist knows humanity, how worthless they are, ruled by their testicles, swayed by cowardice, selling out every cause because of their greed - all he's got to do is thump on the drum, and there's his response. And he's laughing, of course, behind his hand at the effect he gets. ~ Philip K. Dick

Hitler and Joseph Goebbels understood that if you say something loud and long enough many people will believe it. A good journalist's first priority should be to separate propaganda from fact - but sometimes its very hard to do that. ~ Bill O'Reilly

Hitler used to come to my house once in a while for a cup of coffee, and because I led a normal life, he would leave at about 9 p.m ... However, Hitler used to spend practically all of his nights, sometimes until four a.m., with Goebbels ... God knows what evil influence Goebbels had on him during those long visits. ~ Hermann Goring

If the day should ever come when we must go, if some day we are compelled to leave the scene of history, we will slam the door so hard that the universe will shake and mankind will stand back in stupefaction.. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Once more a red fire blows steeply upwards ... the factory will do no more work for Herr Churchill ... tomorrow morning Coventry will lie in smoke and ruins. ~ Joseph Goebbels

That propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails to achieve the desired result. It is not propaganda's task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Rather than suffering from any individual mental pathology, Goebbels held to a view of the world that he shared with much of the population. In the economic chaos after the humiliating Versailles treaty that concluded the First World War, there were millions like him in Germany. He welcomed the Nazi regime not only because it offered material benefits of various kinds but because it validated impulses that were curbed in the civilisation the Nazis set out to overthrow and destroy. The joy of a type of communal solidarity that was based on hatred of minorities; the pleasure of having these minorities in one's power and subjecting them to persecution; the delirious sense of release that comes from surrendering personal judgement and serving an autocratic leader – these were satisfactions that Nazism, at its peak, provided not only for Goebbels but for a majority of Germans. ~ John N. Gray

THERE WILL COME A DAY WHEN ALL THE LIES WILL COLLAPSE UNDER THEIR OWN WEIGHT, AND THE TRUTH WILL TRIUMPH AGAIN ~ Joseph Goebbels

He was in stature but a small man, yet remember that so were Napoleon, Lord Beaverbrook, Stephen A. Douglas, Frederick the Great, and the Dr. Goebbels who is privily known throughout Germany as Wotan's Mickey Mouse. ~ Sinclair Lewis

Socialism" for the Nazis denotes the principle of collectivism as such and its corollary, statism - in every field of human action, including but not limited to economics. "To be a socialist," says Goebbels, "is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole."9 ~ Leonard Peikoff

All over the world, famous people began declaring themselves LeBon fans. Like Mussolini: "I have read all the work of Gustave LeBon and I don't know how many times I have reread The Crowd. It is a capital work to which, to this day, I frequently refer." And Goebbels: "Goebbels thinks that no one since the Frenchman LeBon has understood the mind of the masses as well as he," wrote Goebbels's aide Rudolf Semmler in his wartime diary. ~ Jon Ronson

In the newspapers there is insulting and stirring up hatred. Those irresponsible daubers! ~ Joseph Goebbels

One always feels the need to wash one's hands after being forced to deal with the methods of U.S. interventionism. It is so unpleasant and filthy that one shudders. When one hears the pious nonsense of the Jewish-led world plutocracy over the radio or reads it in the press, one need only to look behind the scenes to feel pity for the miseries of mankind. That such a man has the impudence to judge us, to call on God and the world as witnesses of the purity of his deeds, to incite war and send innocent people singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" to battle for his filthy financial interests can only fill anyone with even the most primitive sense of decency with the deepest horror. Were there only such people in the world, one would have to despise humanity.

"Mr. Roosevelt Cross-Examined", 30 November 1941 ~ Joseph Goebbels

Give your goods to the poor: Christ. Property is theft - as long as it's not mine: Marx . ~ Joseph Goebbels

The night folds her trembling hands over a weary world. Out of a pale blue rises the shining moon. My thoughts are flying to the stars like lonely swans. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Think of the press as a great keyboard
on which the government can play. ~ Joseph Goebbels

To attract people, to win over people to that which I have realized as being true, that is called propaganda. ~ Joseph Goebbels

It's necessary to exterminate these Jews like rats, once and for all. In Germany, thank God, we've already taken care of that. I hope that the world will follow this example. ~ Joseph Goebbels

We shall go down in history as the greatest statesmen of all time,or as the greatest criminals ~ Joseph Goebbels

Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred. ~ Joseph Goebbels

He was the first young man Alex had met since he arrived, all the others buried or missing, irretrievable. Then a few dragging steps and Alex saw why: a Goebbels clubfoot had kept him out of war. ~ Joseph Kanon

Not every item of news should be published. Rather must those who control news policies endeavor to make every item of news serve a certain purpose. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Believers are supposed to hold that the pope is the vicar of Christ on earth, and the keeper of the keys of Saint Peter. They are of course free to believe this, and to believe that god decides when to end the tenure of one pope or (more important) to inaugurate the tenure of another. This would involve believing in the death of an anti-Nazi pope, and the accession of a pro-Nazi one, as a matter of divine will, a few months before Hitler's invasion of Poland and the opening of the Second World War. Studying that war, one can perhaps accept that 25 percent of the SS were practicing Catholics and that no Catholic was ever even threatened with excommunication for participating in war crimes. (Joseph Goebbels was excommunicated, but that was earlier on, and he had after all brought it on himself for the offense of marrying a Protestant.) Human beings and institutions are imperfect, to be sure. But there could be no clearer or more vivid proof that holy institutions are man-made. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Crisis is the path to happiness. Decay and disintegration do not spell doom, but ascent and beginning. The powerful forces of a new creation operate in the hush beyond the noise of the day. ~ Joseph Goebbels

The assumptions that propagandists are rational, in the sense that they follow their own propaganda theories in their choice of communications, and that the meanings of propagandists' communications may differ for different people reoriented the FCC* analysts from a concept of "content as shared" (Berelson would later say "manifest") to conditions that could explain the motivations of particular communicators and the interests they might serve.
The notion of "preparatory propaganda" became an especially useful key for the analysts in their effort to infer the intents of broadcasts with political content. In order to ensure popular support for planned military actions, the Axis leaders had to inform; emotionally arouse, and otherwise prepare their countrymen and women to accept those actions; the FCC analysts discovered that they could learn a great deal about the enemy's intended actions by recognizing such preparatory efforts in the domestic press and broadcasts. They were able to predict several major military and political campaigns and to assess Nazi elites' perceptions of their situation, political changes within the Nazi governing group, and shifts in relations among Axis countries.
Among the more outstanding predictions that British analysts were able to make was the date of deployment of German V weapons against Great Britain. The analysts monitored the speeches delivered by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels and inferred from the content of those speeches ~ Klaus H. Krippendorff

Humanity would sink into eternal darkness, it would fall into a dull and primitive state, were the Jews to win this war. They are the incarnation of that destructive force that in these terrible years has guided the enemy war leadership in a fight against all that we see as noble, beautiful, and worth keeping. For that reason alone the Jews hate us. They despise our culture and learning, which they perceive as towering over their nomadic worldview. They fear our economic and social standards, which leave no room for their parasitic drives. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Advocating through art is known as propaganda. You should look up the name Goebbels. ~ Glenn Beck

Hitler's historical hero had always been Frederick the Great. [Later], under Goebbels' prompting ... Napoleon emerged ... as his model ... Frederick the Great was a man who knew when to stop [and] Napoleon did not. ~ Ernst Hanfstaengl

The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. ~ Joseph Goebbels

The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Should the German people lay down their arms, the Soviets ... would occupy all eastern and south-eastern Europe, together with the greater part of the [German] Reich. All over this territory, which would be of an enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend. ~ Joseph Goebbels

What does Christianity mean today? National Socialism is a religion. All we lack is a religious genius capable of uprooting outmoded religious practices and putting new ones in their place. We lack traditions and ritual. One day soon National Socialism will be the religion of all Germans. My Party is my church, and I believe I serve the Lord best if I do his will, and liberate my oppressed people from the fetters of slavery. That is my gospel. ~ Joseph Goebbels

I'm looking for the teacher who is simple enough to be great, and great enough to be simple. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Christ cannot possibly have been a Jew. I don't have to prove that scientifically. It's a fact. ~ Joseph Goebbels

The war we are fighting until victory or the bitter end is in its deepest sense a war between Christ and Marx. Christ: the principle of love. Marx: the principle of hate. ~ Joseph Goebbels

tried to understand what I'd seen. I felt as if I'd just stepped out of a limn on twentieth-century book burnings: gaunt, vampiric Goebbels screaming beside a seditious inferno; Stalin; Mao and his Red Guards; Iranian forces in the Republic of Mahabad burning anything in Kurdish; midcentury New York school kids incinerating comics in Binghamton; Ray Bradbury's firemen; apartheid-era librarians; Pinochet; Pol Pot; Serbian nationalists setting fire to the National and University Library. ~ Alena Graedon

Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of free speech. ~ Noam Chomsky

A nation without a religion - that is like a man without breath. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Photography today is accomplishing a lofty mission in which every German should collaborate by buying a camera. The German people is ahead of every other in the technical domain and, thanks to its exceptional qualities, the small camera has conquered the whole world ... Much is at stake here from the point of view of popular consumer goods and, furthermore, photography has a particularly important political role to play. (Addressing the Berlin Photography Fair, 1933) ~ Joseph Goebbels

Perhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand [the Holocaust] is almost to justify ... no normal human being will ever be able to identify with Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Eichmann, and endless others. This dismays us, and at the same time gives us a sense of relief, because perhaps it is desirable that their words (and also, unfortunately, their deeds) cannot be comprehensible to us. They are non-human words and deeds, really counter-human ... ~ Primo Levi

Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths. ~ Joseph Goebbels

As socialists, we are opponents of the Jews, because we see in the Hebrews the incarnation of capitalism, of the misuse of the nation's goods. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Love is meant for husbands, but my love for Hitler is stronger, I would give my life for it. ~ Magda Goebbels

The money pigs of capitalist democracy: Money has made slaves of us. Money is the curse of mankind. It smothers the seed of everything great and good. Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Do not seek Adolf Hitler with your mind. You will find him through the strength of your hearts. ~ Joseph Goebbels

If we have power, we'll never give it up again unless we're carried out of our offices as corpses ~ Joseph Goebbels

The war made possible for us the solution of a whole series of problems that could never have been solved in normal times. ~ Joseph Goebbels

A Jew is for me an object of disgust. I feel like vomiting when I see one. Christ could not possibly have been a Jew. It is not necessary to prove that scientifically - it is a fact. I do not need to prove this with science or scholarship. It is so! ~ Joseph Goebbels