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PROPAGANDA QUOTES
Adolf Hitler, from Mein Kampf: "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."
Adolf Hitler, from Mein Kampf: "The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence, 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 what you want him to understand by your slogan."
Aldous Huxley, quoted in Volkischer Beobachter, 23 March 1933: "Propaganda gives force and direction to the successive movements of popular feeling and desire; but it does not do much to create these movements. The propagandist is a man who canalizes an already existing stream. In a land where there is no water, he digs in vain."
Josef Goebbels, from the Bundesarchiv, Reichskanzlei/II 1149, pp. 27-28: "Propaganda is a much maligned and misunderstood word. The layman uses it to mean something inferior or even despicable. The word ‘propaganda’ always leaves a bitter after-taste. But if you examine propaganda’s most secret causes, you will come to different conclusions: then there will be no more doubting that the propagandist must be the man with the greatest knowledge of souls. I cannot convince a single person of the necessity of something unless I have got to know the soul of that person, unless I understand how to pluck the string in the harp of his soul that must be made to sound. . . . he propagandist must not just know the soul of the people in general, but he must understand the secret swings of the popular soul from one side to another. The propagandist must understand how to speak not only to the people in their totality, but also to individual sections of the population: to the worker, the peasant, the middle class. He must understand how to speak to different professions and to different faiths. The propagandist must always be in a position to speak to people in the language they understand. These capacities are the essential preconditions for success."
Josef Goebbels: "The masses need something that will give them a thrill of horror."
Josef Goebbels, quoted in L.P. Lochner, ed., The Goebbels Diaries (London, 1948), p. 22: "he rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitive. In the long run basic results in influencing public opinion will be achieved only by the man who is able to reduce problems to the simplest terms and who has the courage to keep forever repeating them in this simplified form, despite the objections of the intellectuals."
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