Joseph Goebbels Quotes

One class has fulfilled its historical mission and is about to yield to another. The bourgeoisie has to yield to the working class ... Whatever is about to fall should be pushed. We are all soldiers of the revolution. We want the workers' victory over filthy lucre. That is socialism.

Die Nacht ist meine beste Freundin. Sie glättet den Sturm in der Seele und lässt die weisenden Sterne aufgehen.

If the German people lay down their weapons, the Soviets, according to the agreement between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, would occupy all of East and Southeast Europe along with the greater part of the Reich. An iron curtain would fall over this enormous territory controlled by the Soviet Union, behind which nations would be slaughtered.

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.

The Jew is the plastic demon of decomposition. Where he finds filth and decay, he surfaces and begins his butcher’s work among the nations. He hides behind a mask and presents himself as a friend to his victims, and before they know it he has broken their neck.

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

Sozialist sein: das heißt, das Ich dem Du unterordnen, die Persönlichkeit der Gesamtheit zum Opfer bringen. Sozialismus ist im tiefsten Sinne Dienst. Verzicht für den Einzelnen und Forderung für das Ganze. Friedrich der Große war ein Sozialist auf dem Königsthron. "Ich bin der erste Diener am Staat." Ein königliches Sozialistenwort! Eigentum ist Diebstahl: das sagt der Pöbel. Jedem das Seine: das sagt der Charakter.

Because we are socialists we have felt the deepest blessings of the nation, and because we are nationalists we want to promote socialist justice in a new Germany.

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!

What you get, you don't want, and what you want, you don't get.

David Irving, Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (Focal Point Publications, 2014), Pp. 67

As quoted in "Erkenntnis und Propaganda," Signale der neuen Zeit. 25 ausgewählte Reden von Dr. Joseph Goebbels (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1934), pp. 28-52

We are not a charitable institution but a Party of revolutionary socialists.

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.

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.

After supper we are sitting close to the church in a quiet spot. As if from a distance we hear prayers and singing. The monks are holding their vesper services. Then it falls silent, wonderfully silent! The sun has already set. … We are quiet, too. … A door is closed somewhere. A man's, then a woman's voice. Children are praying! My dear Jesus! Then it falls silent again. Wonderfully silent! The night spreads its wide, black wings over the land.