Joseph Goebbels Quotes

The system of liberal capitalist democracy is already so rotten inside that there is nothing left to mend or reform. It must be fundamentally destroyed, shattered spiritually and in terms of power politics, so that a young, new generation can build a future on the ruins of the past.

Never in world history has a new worldview—and socialism is such a thing—triumphed in capitulation, always only in resistance, in attack. In 1918 there was only one task for the German socialist: to keep the weapons and defend German socialism. One did not do that. One talked and made resolutions, and the German worker did not notice at all that in the process he just held the stirrups of his bitterest enemy, world money.

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.

The firmer the republic takes its subjects in tax forced labor and tribute duty, the louder it talks about the rights of the republicans. National Socialism puts an end to that: for it, each state citizen must assume duties toward the state corresponding to his abilities, but every assumed duty conditions a right. The more duties, the more rights.

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

The eight hour work day is one of the most justified demands of the workers… Nobody who feels even just a trace of social feeling within himself will be able to stand aloof from the moral as well as the social-political justification for this demand. Well, work, as is known, is not an end in itself, rather only a means to an end.

Socialism is only achievable in a state that is internally united and externally free. Both goals, internal unity and external freedom, have been lost to us through the fault of bourgeoisie and Marxism. Both these groups, as national and social as they may deport themselves, are the mortal enemies of a socialist national state… Against the political bourgeoisie: for genuine nationalism! Against Marxism: for genuine socialism!

We are socialists, because we see in socialism, that means, in the fateful dependence of all folk comrades upon each other, the sole possibility for the preservation of our racial genetics and thus the re-conquest of our political freedom and for the rejuvenation of the German state.

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

The political bourgeoisie is about to leave the stage of history. In its place advance the oppressed producers of the head and hand, the forces of Labor (Arbeitertum), to being their historical mission.

We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons. If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem... We are coming neither as friends or neutrals. We come as enemies! As the wolf attacks the sheep, so come we.

To attract people, to win over people to that which I have realised as being true, that is called propaganda. In the beginning there is the understanding, this understanding uses propaganda as a tool to find those men, that shall turn understanding into politics. 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 from what 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. Those are found in other circumstances, I find them when thinking at my desk, but not in the meeting hall.

Der Nazi-Sozi, Elberfeld: Verlag der Nationalsozialistischen Briefe (1927)

Production that is essentially completed, which no longer requires strength, ability, inventiveness, entrepreneurship and brilliance (e.g., the transportation system, trusts, conglomerates) will be brought back to state ownership.

Der Nazi-Sozi, Elberfeld: Verlag der Nationalsozialistischen Briefe, (1927)