Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda of Germany from 1933 to 1945. He was one of Adolf Hitler’s closest and most devoted associates, and was known for his skills in public speaking and his deeply virulent antisemitism, which was evident in his publicly voiced views. Top Joseph Goebbels quotes will show you his thought process and how he manipulated the masses.
Famous Joseph Goebbels Quotes
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. – 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
If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself. – 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 stronger, and this will always bethe 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
A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth – Joseph Goebbels
Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident, they are acting on their own free will. – Joseph Goebbels
Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred. – 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
The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious. – Joseph Goebbels
Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play. – Joseph Goebbels
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
There will come a day, when all the lies will collapse under their own weight, and truth will again triumph. – 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
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
It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion. – 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
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
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
To be a socialist is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole. – Joseph Goebbels
A media system wants ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity – Joseph Goebbels
There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content. – Joseph Goebbels
Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship-run state has its roots in the street. – Joseph Goebbels
The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror. – 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
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
To be modern only means to fill new forms with eternal truths. – Joseph Goebbels
Short shrift is made of the Jews in all eastern occupied areas. Tens of thousands of them are liquidated. – Joseph Goebbels
If Christ came back, he would drive his treacherous servants out of the temple with a whip. – Joseph Goebbels
Give your goods to the poor: Christ. Property is theft – as long as it’s not mine: Marx. – 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 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
When you stroll through Munich it can happen that you suddenly stand in front of an old house, an idyllically dreaming church that smiles like a friendly anachronism into our modern time. – Joseph Goebbels
In the newspapers there is insulting and stirring up hatred. Those irresponsible daubers! – Joseph Goebbels
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
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
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
Devotion, fervor, longing! Those are my pillars. We have to be the bridge to the future. – Joseph Goebbels
He who cannot hate the devil cannot love God. – Joseph Goebbels
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
It is on this beautiful day that we celebrate the Fuhrers birthday and thank him for he is the only reason why Germany is still alive today – Joseph Goebbels
Mozart didn’t need a scheme for his music. He played and sang with the heavenly lightness of a child. – 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
A thousand years hence, every German will speak with awe of Stalingrad and remember that it was there that Germany put the seal on her victory. – Joseph Goebbels
A nation without a religion – that is like a man without breath. – Joseph Goebbels
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
I’m looking for the teacher who is simple enough to be great, and great enough to be simple. – Joseph Goebbels
The age of hairsplitting Jewish intellectualism is dead… The past lies in flames. – Joseph Goebbels
Revolutions are spiritual acts. They appear first in people, then in politics and the economy. New people form new structures. The transformation we want is first of all spiritual; that will necessarily change the way things are. – Joseph Goebbels
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. – Joseph Goebbels
The modern man is necessarily a seeker of God, maybe a Man of Christ. – Joseph Goebbels
Photography today is accomplishing a lofty mission in which every German should collaborate by buying a camera. The German people is ahead of every other in the technical domain and, thanks to its exceptional qualities, the small camera has conquered the whole world… Much is at stake here from the point of view of popular consumer goods and, furthermore, photography has a particularly important political role to play. (Addressing the Berlin Photography Fair, 1933) – Joseph Goebbels
Man only honors what he conquers or defends. – Joseph Goebbels
We have made the Reich by propaganda – Joseph Goebbels
The experience of the individual has become the experience of the people, thanks solely to the camera. – Joseph Goebbels
If we are attacked, we can only defend ourselves with guns not with butter. – Joseph Goebbels
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
It takes a bomb under his arse to make Hitler see logic. – Joseph Goebbels
One should not as a rule reveal one’s secrets, since one does not know if and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. 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
Intellectual activity is a danger to the building of character. – Joseph Goebbels
Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today? – Joseph Goebbels
this world is beautiful because of you! To love somebody means that we’re closer to God. – Joseph Goebbels
If we have power, we’ll never give it up again unless we’re carried out of our offices as corpses – Joseph Goebbels
The fatherland shall one day be like this: We’re not all equal, but we’re all brothers. – Joseph Goebbels
To be a socialist means to let the ego serve the neighbor, to sacrifice the self for the whole. In its deepest sense socialism equals service. The individual refrains and the commonwealth demands. – Joseph Goebbels
Leben verstehen wir Deutschen vielleicht nicht, aber sterben, das können wir fabelhaft! (We, the germans, might not be able to live, but to die, that we marvellously) – Joseph Goebbels
Hypocrisy is the characteristic feature of the dying bourgeois epoch. – 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
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 cannot be understood. – Joseph Goebbels
The night is my best friend. It calms the storm in my soul, and it lets the guiding stars rise. – Joseph Goebbels
Today there seems to be only one absolute thing: relativism. – Joseph Goebbels
A law against hating Jews is usually the beginning of the end for the Jews. – 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
To attract people, to win over people to that which I have realized as being true, that is called propaganda. – Joseph Goebbels
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
Man is and remains an animal. Here a beast of prey, there a housepet, but always an animal. – Joseph Goebbels
The war made possible for us the solution of a whole series of problems that could never have been solved in normal times. – Joseph Goebbels
We shall go down in history as the greatest statesmen of all time, or as the greatest criminals – 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
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
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
During a war, news should be given out for instruction rather than information. – 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
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
Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place… – Joseph Goebbels
The Jew is contrary to our being. … He desecrated our people, spit on our ideals, paralyzed the strength of the nation, made our customs rotten, and polluted the morale. – Joseph Goebbels
Do not seek Adolf Hitler with your mind. You will find him through the strength of your hearts. – Joseph Goebbels
It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success. – Joseph Goebbels
When I hear the word ‘culture,’ I get out my revolver. – Joseph Goebbels
The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed. – Joseph Goebbels
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
A mother who is not everything for her children: a friend, a teacher, a confidant, a source of joy and founded pride, inducement and soothing, reconciliatory, judge and forgiver, that mother obviously chose the wrong job. – 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
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
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
Everything is what you make of it, even yourself. – 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
You have nothing to fear, if you have nothing to hide – 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
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 truth is the greatest enemy of the State. – Joseph Goebbels
