Quotes from Adolf Hitler

I was somewhat hesitant to quote Hitler - people could misconstrue my reprinting of his thoughts as endorsement. Nothing could be further from the truth. Libertarianism and fascism are at polar opposite ends of the political spectrum. What garners the majority of my attention is that most of his quotes are directly applicable to the way our politicians manipulate our populace. Learn, and reject the tactics used by American politicians that were espoused by Adolph Hitler.

The lessons to be learned? Tune out that which is oft repeated. Demand intellectual honesty. Refuse to react to feelings - always reason! And lastly, question, question, question!

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From Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler

"The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence small, but their power of forgetting is enormous.  In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands..." pp.  180-181.

"In political matters feeling often decides more correctly than reason." p. 173

"All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to.  Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be." p. 180

"But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention.  It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over." p. 184

"It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific instruction, for instance... As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered." pp.  180-181

"[Propaganda] must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect... The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses." p.  180

"[Propaganda] does not have multiple shadings; it has a positive and a negative; love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lie, never half this way and half that way…" p. 183

"[This is the] very first condition which has to be fulfilled in every kind of propaganda: a systematically one-sided attitude towards every problem that has to be dealt with…" p. 182

"The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more effective [propaganda] will be. "p. 180

"For I must not measure the speech of a statesman to his people by the impression which it leaves in a university professor, but by the effect it exerts on the people.  And this alone gives the standard for the speaker's genius." p. 477

"The purpose of propaganda is not to provide interesting distraction for blasé young gentlemen, but to convince… the masses.  But the masses are slow moving, and they always require a certain time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are repeated thousands of times will the masses finally remember them." p. 185

"When there is change, it must not alter the content of what propaganda is driving at, but in the end must always say the same thing.  For instance, a slogan must be presented from different angles, but the end of all remarks must always and immutably be the slogan itself.  Only in this way can the propaganda have a unified and complete effect." p. 185