Joseph Goebbels

"Industrial reform in Russia took place as Karl Marx had suggested. They actually tried to merge industry and the state. It failed. The Russian worker got rid of his Russian bloodsuckers — to leave the field to the Jew. Today the Jew is the master of Russia, Jewish capital rules, the Russian is a slave to stock market dictatorship."

"Simply stated: capital and capitalism are two different things. The struggle is against capitalism, not capital. It is not the fact that there are factories, that there are mining assets, that is to blame for our misery, but rather the way in which they are managed and exploited contrary to the people’s welfare. Capitalism is the immoral distribution of capital. Marxism is Jewish there, too; it fights national capital in order to make it capitalism. Its theory is demagogic. Its practice is devastating."

"Thus, we see from Lenin and his industrial reform that no salvation can come to the German people from this side, because communism, Marxism, as an ally of the Jewish stock market swindlers, never wants real freedom. It needs compliant slaves for its system of exploitation, but no free people for its plans for world domination. Real freedom means its end."

"Marxism did not want socialism at all because the men stood and stand behind it preached phases of freedom, peace, and prosperity, but did not want social liberation at all, only using the workers as willing slaves for their purposes!... What we call National Socialism is the result of bourgeois betrayal of the national idea and Marxist betrayal of the socialist idea."

"We do not want a bourgeois state. We do not want a proletarian state. We want Germany! The nation is the last and the greatest thing, the individual is nothing before it. But this nation is only completely united when every individual has his place in it. It is only a community of destiny when the 30 million from the left are part of it as a German working community rooted in its land… We are socialist because we do not want to fight for the rights of our enslaved comrades as gifts given voluntarily or even involuntarily. We are socialist because we see those rights as a state necessity and as national justice."

"The socialism we want has nothing to do with international Marxist-Jewish egalitarianism. We want socialism as a doctrine of the community."

"I dedicate this book to the memory of my friend Richard Flisges, who died as a brave soldier of work in a mine at Schliersee on the 19th of July 1923."

"1920. Both of us were about to capitulate facing spiritual breakdown. Then we helped each other to stand tall and did not falter. My answer was: Resistance!"

"1923. You challenged your fate. To surmount or to die! It was not yet time. Therefore you became a victim. Your answer was: Death!"

"1927. I stood in front of your grave; in radiating sunshine there was a still, green mound. And it was preaching about mortality. My answer was: resurrection."

"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, reconciliator, judge and forgiver, that mother obviously chose the wrong job."

"I'm looking for the teacher who is simple enough to be great, and great enough to be simple."

"Everything is what you make of it, even yourself."

"One only honours what one conquers or defends."

"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."

"A nation without a religion - that is like a man without breath."

"Today there seems to be only one absolute thing: relativism."

"The modern man is necessarily a seeker of God, maybe a Man of Christ."

"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.""

"If Christ came back he would drive his treacherous servants out of the temple with a whip."

"Mozart didn't need a scheme for his music. He played and sang with the heavenly lightness of a child."

"I should like to be a parson on this island. Explain the Sermon on the Mount to ordinary people and let the world be the world."

"My God is a God of strength. HE does not like the smell of frankincense and the dishonoring crawl of the crowd. I stand before HIM proudly, with the head held high, as HE created me, and I profess gladly and freely before HIM. The true German seeks God for all of his life."

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

"I feel how inside of me word follows word and thought follows thought, growing to the last act of creation. Holy hour of bringing forth, you are pain and pleasure, and a longing for form, image and essence. I am only the instrument that God uses to sing his song. I am only the vessel that nature smilingly fills with new wine."

"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."

"We shall be quiet and wait till a star falls from heaven. Can you see, how above one light appears after the other and they together form a dome! We sit in silence and fold our hands in prayer. We shall be quiet and wait until a star falls from heaven."

"A child laughs when it feels joy and cries when it feels pain. Both things, laughing and crying, it does with its whole heart. We have all become so tall and so clever. We know so much and we have read so much. But one thing we have forgot: to laugh and cry like the children do."

"Devotion, fervor, longing! Those are my pillars. We have to be the bridge to the future."

"Dostoyevsky is ahead of his time - a few daring steps. You follow him, dizzying, fearful, incredulous; but you follow. He won't let loose, you have to follow. … You simply have to call him unique. He comes from nowhere and belongs nowhere. And yet he is always a Russian."

"The night is my best friend. It calms the storm in my soul and it lets the guiding stars rise."

"I put down the oars and float endlessly as if to the eternal shore. Blue light of the moon shines on my sail. My boat is gliding to a secure haven. Only silent waves break against it. Deepest silence surrounds me and my soul builds a golden bridge to a star."

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

"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."

"The fatherland shall one day be like this: We're not all equal, but we're all brothers."

"That's what the democratic parties personify: business groups! Nothing more. 'Weltanschauung? What kind of reactionary expression is that? Honor, loyalty, creed, convictions? Man, you are living in yesterday!'"

"To be a socialist means to let the ego serve the neighbour, to sacrifice the self for the whole. In its deepest sense socialism equals service. The individual refrains and the commonwealth demands. Frederick the Great was a socialist on a king's throne. "I'm the first servant of the state." A kingly socialist saying. Property is theft – so says the mob. Each to his own – so says the personality."

"Hypocrisy is the characteristic feature of the dying bourgeois epoch."

"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."

"How beautiful life is! Music and dancing! The violins are sobbing. The first stopper of a bottle of champagne bangs. And now there's a mad singing and shouting. Everybody joins in and sings and shouts! Embracing, friendship, eternal friendship! How beautiful the women are! Dressed in black and red. But you are the prettiest, Hertha! … Hey, you grumblers, go to hell! Music and dancing. The violins are sobbing. Women dressed in black and red. But you are the prettiest, Hertha!"

"O this world is beautiful because of you! To love somebody means that we're closer to God."

"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."

"Great hour! Spent together, rejoicing and dreaming. Days and years are gathering. We are a still island in the ocean of the world. Beginning and end! Border between life and eternity! Euphoria, fulfillment, existence!"

"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."

"That was my longing: for the mountains' divine solitude and peacefulness, for pure, white snow. I got tired of the big city. I am at home again in the mountains. There I sit for many hours amid their white virginity and find myself again."

"Old Christmas Songs. I feel something like a longing for a lost homeland. We are giving gifts to each other. A beautiful, old New Testament from Hertha Holk is my greatest joy. I thank her for being my solace and my strength."

"This city is grey and miserable. The houses are covered with soot, the people grave and taciturn. Black masses move along the streets; meager and pale faces, the necks bend down. Children are sitting at the street corners, begging. In front of the shops women are standing with old, grey faces. Night falls. The discharge tubes ignite. Light shines down on misery and filth. My heart wrenches. Whores and pimps are dragging themselves through the small and narrow lanes. Yonder red lights are glowing. The evening seems to spread black wings over the city. Richness and misery are living close to each other. It makes you feel like crying."

"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."

"Christ is the genius of love and as such the most diametric antipole to Jewry, which is the incarnation of hate. … Christ was the first anti-Jewish opponent of stature. … The Jew is the lie that became flesh. He nailed Christ to the cross, and thus for the first time in history nailed the eternal truth to the cross."

"The worker in a capitalist state—and that is his deepest misfortune—is no longer a living human being, a creator, a maker. He has become a machine. A number, a cog in the machine without sense or understanding. He is alienated from what he produces.”"