Joseph Goebbels Quotes

Lenin was the greatest man, second only to Hitler, and that the difference between communism and the Hitler faith was very slight.

Daß Ihr das [Freiheit der Meinung] uns gegeben habt, - das ist ja ein Beweis dafür, wie dumm Ihr seid!

The sin of bourgeois patriotism was to confound a certain economic form with the national. It connected two things that are entirely different. Forms of the economy, however firm they may seem, are changeable. The national is eternal. If I mix the eternal and the temporal, the eternal will necessarily collapse when the temporal collapses. This was the real cause for the collapse of liberal society. It was rooted not in the eternal, but in the temporal, and when the temporal declined it took the eternal down with it. Today it is only an excuse for a system that brings growing economic misery. That is the only reason why international Jewry organizes the battle of the proletarian forces against both powers, the economy and the nation, and defeat them.

Here propaganda has its place. It must prepare the way actively and educationally. Its task is to prepare the way for practical actions. It must follow these actions step by step, never losing sight of them. In a manner of speaking, it provides the background music. Such propaganda in the end miraculously makes the unpopular popular, enabling even a government’s most difficult decisions to secure the resolute support of the people. A government that uses it properly can do what is necessary without running the risk of losing the masses.

We are socialists because we see the social question as a matter of necessity and justice for the very existence of a state for our people, not a question of cheap pity or insulting sentimentality. The worker has a claim to a living standard that corresponds to what he produces.

We demand a strict social justice, work and livelihood for the broad masses, residences and bread and thus life joy for the German worker.

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

Already the elections of the year 1929 brought us a great influx from the Marxist camp. In Berlin alone, we managed in the municipal elections in November 1929 to snatch from the Reds of both colors nearly sixty thousand votes.

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.

If it works against the general welfare, then it is treason against the fatherland.

Joseph Goebbels, "Warum sind wir Judengegner?", Der Angriff. Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (1935), Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, pp. 329–331

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. Only the annihilation of a system of exploitation carries with it the core of the rebirth of our people.

Mein Gott ist ein Gott der Stärke. Er mag nicht den Weihrauchdampf und das entehrende Kriechen der Menge. Ich stehe vor ihm stolz erhobenen Hauptes, wie er mich erschaffen hat, und bekenne mich freudig und frei vor ihm. Der wahre Deutsche bleibt Zeit seines Lebens ein Gottsucher.

The nation and the government in Germany are one thing. The will of the people is the will of the government and vice versa. The modern structure of the German State is a higher form of democracy [ennobled democracy] in which, by virtue of the people’s mandate, the government is exercised authoritatively while there is no possibility for parliamentary interference to obliterate and render ineffective the execution of the nation’s will.

1920. Wir standen beide im Begriff, vor seelischem Zusammenbruch zu kapitulieren. Da richteten wir uns aneinander auf und strauchelten kaum. Meine Antwort war: Trotz!