Quotes & Sayings About Goebbels

Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place ... — Joseph Goebbels

This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it. — Joseph Goebbels

If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth. — 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

We have made the Reich by propaganda — Joseph Goebbels

A law against hating Jews is usually the beginning of the end for the Jews. — 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

The people's community must not be a mere phrase, but a revolutionary achievement following from the radical carrying out of the basic life needs of the working class. A ruthless battle against corruption! A war against exploitation, freedom for the workers! The elimination of all economic-capitalist influences on national policy ... Maintaining a rotten economic system has nothing to do with nationalism, which is an affirmation of the Fatherland. I can love Germany and hate capitalism. Not only can I, I must. — Joseph Goebbels

The end of the year! I draw the balance. Inquiry of conscience and request to the Spirit for progress and maturity. — 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

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

You have nothing to fear, if you have nothing to hide — Joseph Goebbels

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

To be modern only means to fill new forms with eternal truths. — Joseph Goebbels

Hereafter we all have to be redeemed. The world is pulling with a thousand strings. We sin because of indifference and negligence and heap new guilt on the old original one. Our life is a
chain of sin and expiation controlled by a destiny that can not be understood. — Joseph Goebbels

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

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

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

Though anti-Semitism had been only one of several sources of Nazi voting strength, after 1933 Hitler placed anti-Semitic ideologues, the most important of whom were Joseph Goebbels, Otto Dietrich and Alfred Rosenberg, at the top of the key opinion-shaping institutions. In a dictatorship resting on the 'leadership principle', Hitler's anti-Semitic convictions defined policy. — Jeffrey Herf

We haven't heard from you yet, Frau Vetter," said the commandant. "Oh yes ... yes ... I was supposed to call you, that number ... " I fumbled in my bag. "I wonder if I still have it ... " Did I really imagine that I could convince him I had misplaced his number the way I had "lost" my Nazi Red Cross pin? "The number is on your desk," he said with a smile. "Ah. Yes. In my office." "No. Not that desk. The antique desk with the brass fittings and feet like the claws of a lion, the desk you have in your apartment." In my mind's ear, I heard the fiend Goebbels laughing. — Edith Hahn Beer

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

Devotion, fervor, longing! Those are my pillars. We have to be the bridge to the future. — Joseph Goebbels

Himmler, Bormann, and Goebbels, they were probably bad fellows. — Fritz Sauckel

Short shrift is made of the Jews in all eastern occupied areas. Tens of thousands of them are liquidated. — Joseph Goebbels

The experience of the individual has become the experience of the people, thanks solely to the camera. — 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

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

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

At night I sit in my chamber and read the bible . Far in the distance roars the sea. Then I lie down and think for a long time about the calm and pale man from Nazareth. — Joseph Goebbels

Today there seems to be only one absolute thing: relativism. — Joseph Goebbels

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

Every morning the editors of the Berlin daily newspapers and the correspondents of those published elsewhere in the Reich gathered at the Propaganda Ministry to be told by Dr. Goebbels or by one of his aides what news to print and suppress, how to write the news and headline it, what campaigns to call off or institute and what editorials were desired for the day. In — William L. Shirer

The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. — Joseph Goebbels

If you repeat a lie often enough it becomes accepted as truth. — Joseph Goebbels

It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise. — 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

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

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

We have had much to bear already. And still more will we have to bear. Let us thank God for being young. — Joseph Goebbels

The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed. — Joseph Goebbels

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

To be a socialist means to let the ego serve the neighbour, to sacrifice the self for the whole. In its deepest sense socialism equals service. The individual refrains and the commonwealth
demands. — Joseph Goebbels

Joseph Goebbels had artfully accomplished what all good propagandists must, convincing the world that their version of reality was reasonable and their opponents' version biased. In doing that, Goebbels had not only created a compelling vision of the new Germany but also undercut the Nazis' opponents in the West - whether they were American Jews in New York City or members of Parliament in London or anxious Parisians - making all of them seem shrill, hysterical, and misinformed. As thousands of Americans returned home from the games that fall, many of them felt as one quoted in a German propaganda publication did: "As for this man Hitler. . . . Well I believe we should all like to take him back to America with us and have him organize there just as he has done in Germany. — Daniel James Brown

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

If Christ came back he would drive his treacherous servants out of the temple with a whip. — Joseph Goebbels

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

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

The life is worth living. It's not true, what the tired and reactionary say. We're not on this earth to suffer and die. We're here to fulfill a mission. — Joseph Goebbels

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State. — 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

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

Hypocrisy is the characteristic feature of the dying bourgeois epoch. — 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

In the newspapers there is insulting and stirring up hatred. Those irresponsible daubers! — 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

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

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

We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear's work, that is its affair. We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come. — Joseph Goebbels

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

During a war, news should be given out for instruction rather than information. — Joseph Goebbels

Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated
are confident they are acting on their own free will. — Joseph Goebbels

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

To be a socialist is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole. — 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

We can do without butter, but, despite all our love of peace, not without arms. One cannot shoot with butter, but with guns. — 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

It is really one of the things in it that I heard yesterday in his testimony that I thought was disturbing was this what did he call it? a massive persuasion campaign. That sounded a little bit like Goebbels or Gore-bels. — Glenn Beck

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

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

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

Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred. — 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

Good propaganda does not need to lie, indeed it may not lie. It has no reason to fear the truth. It is a mistake to believe that people cannot take the truth. They can. It is only a matter of presenting the truth to people in a way that they will be able to understand. A propaganda that lies proves that it has a bad cause. It cannot be successful in the long run. — Joseph Goebbels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

camp: "If they should at any time attempt, even in a small way, to move from their criticism to a new act of perjury, they can be sure that what confronts them today is not the cowardly and corrupt bourgeoisie of 1918 but the fist of the entire people. It is the fist of the nation that is clenched and will smash down anyone who dares to undertake even the slightest attempt at sabotage." Goebbels acted immediately — Erik Larson

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

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

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

When I hear the word 'culture,' I get out my revolver. — Joseph Goebbels

It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion. — 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

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

A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth — 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

Leni Riefenstahl was the one person Goebbels had no control over in the filmmaking community of Nazi Germany, and they despised each other. But because she was Hitler's favorite, she could do what she wanted. She was the only filmmaker that did not have to cow down to Joseph Goebbels. — Quentin Tarantino

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

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

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

Man is and remains an animal.Here a beast of prey, there a housepet, but always an animal. — Joseph Goebbels

The night is my best friend. It calms the storm in my soul and it lets the guiding stars rise. — Joseph Goebbels

The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it. — Joseph Goebbels

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

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