Joseph Goebbels Quotes

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.

We oppose the Jews because we affirm the German people. The Jew is our greatest misfortune.

Capitalism assumes unbearable forms at the moment when the personal purposes that it serves run contrary to the interest of the overall folk. It then proceeds from things and not from people. Money is then the axis around which everything revolves. It is the reverse with socialism. The socialist worldview begins with the folk and then goes over to things. Things are made subservient to the folk; the socialist puts the folk above everything, and things are only means to an end.

Hypocrisy is the characteristic feature of the dying bourgeois epoch.

What does anti-Semitism have to do with socialism? I would put the question this way: What does the Jew have to do with socialism? Socialism has to do with labor. When did one ever see him working instead of plundering, stealing and living from the sweat of others? As socialists we are opponents of the Jews because we see in the Hebrews the incarnation of capitalism.

On this day the whole nation at all levels, in all its professions, occupations, and estates, acknowledges the dignity and blessedness of labour. On a day when in former times we heard the rattles of machine-guns and the hate-inspired songs of the class struggle and the Internationale, in this first year of Hitler’s government and the German people is assembled in unanimous, unswerving loyalty to the state, the race (Volk), and the German nation to which we all belong. Every difference is wiped away. The barriers of class hatred and the arrogance of social status that for over 50 years divided the nation from itself have been torn down. Germans of all classes, tribes (Stämme), professions, and denominations have joined hands across the barriers that separated them and have vowed henceforth to live as a community, to work and fight for the fatherland that unites us all. … The class struggle is at an end. The idea of the national community rises above the ruins of the bankrupt liberal-capitalist state. … Thus the German people marches into the future.

The end of the year! I draw the balance. Inquiry of conscience and request to the Spirit for progress and maturity. I grew stronger inside of me and I strive for a clearer knowledge and stronger faith.

It is rotten and dismal that a world of so many hundred million people should be ruled by a single caste that has the power to lead millions to life or to death, indeed on a whim...This caste has spun its web over the entire earth; capitalism recognizes no national boundaries...Capitalism has learned nothing from recent events and wants to learn nothing, because it places its own interests ahead of those of the other millions. Can one blame those millions for standing up for their own interests, and only for those interests? Can one blame them for striving to forge an international community whose purpose is the struggle against corrupt capitalism? Can one condemn a large segment of the educated Stürmer youth for protesting against the greatest ability? Is it not an abomination that people with the most brilliant intellectual gifts should sink into poverty and disintegrate, while others dissipate, squander, and waste the money that could help them? … You say the old propertied class also worked hard for what it has. Granted, that may be true in many cases. But do you also know about the conditions under which workers were living during the period when capitalism “earned” its fortune?

Grau ist die Stadt und elend. Die Häuser verrußt, die Menschen ernst und wortkarg. Schwarze Massen wälzen sich durch die Straßen; schmale, bleiche Gesichter über gebeugte Nacken. Kinder sitzen an den Straßenecken und betteln. Vor den Läden stehen Frauen mit alten, grauen Gesichtern. Es wird Abend. Die Bogenlampen flammen auf. Licht über Elend und Schmutz. Das Herz krampft sich mir zusammen. Durch schmale, enge Gassen schlurfen Dirnen und Zuhälter. Da brennen rote Lichter. Es ist, als schlüge der Abend schwarze Flügel über die Stadt. Reichtum und Elend wohnen hier nebeneinander. Man möchte weinen.

The lines of German socialism are sharp, and our path is clear. We are against the political bourgeoisie, and for genuine nationalism! We are against Marxism, but for true socialism! We are for the first German national state of a socialist nature! We are for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party!

Mozart brauchte kein Programm für seine Musik. Er musizierte und sang mit der göttlichen Leichtigkeit eines Kindes.

On to Chemnitz. Speech to two thousand communists. Meeting quiet and factual. At the end devastating free-for-all fight. A thousand beer glasses smashed. Hundred and fifty wounded, thirty seriously, two dead.

Socialism is possible only in a state that is united domestically and free internationally. The bourgeoisie and Marxism are responsible for failing to reach both goals, domestic unity and international freedom. No matter how national and social these two forces present themselves, they are the sworn enemies of a socialist national state.

The nation is the organic union of a people to protect its life.

Der Kongress zur Nürnberg (1934) Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., Frz. Eher Nachf., 1934 , pp. 130-141.