Adolf Hitler on Life

"Works of art which cannot be understood in themselves but need some pretentious instruction book to justify their existence will never again find their way to the German people."

"I am perhaps more capable than anyone else of understanding and realizing the nature and the whole life of the various German castes."

"I am for force, because in force I see strength, and in strength the eternal mother of rights, and in rights the root of life itself."

"Genius is a will-o'-the-wisp if it lacks a solid foundation of perseverence and fanatical tenacity. This is the most important thing in all of human life..."

"The Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of St Germain are kept alive by Bolshevism in Germany. The Peace Treaty and Bolshevism are two heads of one monster. We must decapitate both."

"There is a difference between the theoretical knowledge of socialism and the practical life of socialism. People are not born socialists, but must first be taught how to become them."

"One may regret living at a period when it's impossible to form an idea of the shape the world of the future will assume. But there's one thing I can predict to eaters of meat: the world of the future will be vegetarian."

"We have a great aim before us; a mighty work of reform of ourselves and our lives, of our life in common, of our economy, of our culture. This work does not disturb the rest of the world. We have enough to do in our own house."

"We know that the English people in their entirety cannot be held responsible for all this. Rather it is the aforesaid Jewish-plutocratic and democratic upper class who would like to conceive of the rest of the world as obedient slaves; who hate our new Reich because it sees it as a pioneer of social work which it fears might infect their countries as well."

"When the statesmen of other countries threaten us with all kinds of economic counter measures I can only give the assurance that in such a case a desperate economic struggle would ensue which would be easy for us to carry out, easier for us than for the over-satisfied nations, because our leading idea would be a very simple one: The German nation must live—that means export or die."

"What is important is that our Volk overcomes the aggressor and hence wins a future for itself. In a few weeks, the National Socialist combat readiness must have transformed itself into a unity sworn unto life and death. And then the capitalist war agitators in England and its satellite states shall shortly realize what it means to have attacked Europe's greatest Volk state without proper cause."

"We shall banish want. We shall banish fear. The essence of National Socialism is human welfare. There must be cheap Volkswagen for workers to ride in, broad Reich Autobahns for the Volkswagen. National Socialism is the Revolution of the Common Man. Rooted in a fuller life for every German from childhood to old age, National Socialism means a new day of abundance at home and a Better World Order abroad."

"The National Socialist Movement, on the contrary, will always let its foreign policy be determined by the necessity to secure the space necessary to the life of our Folk. It knows no Germanising or Teutonising, as in the case of the national bourgeoisie, but only the spread of its own Folk. It will never see in the subjugated, so called Germanised, Czechs or Poles a national, let alone Folkish, strengthening, but only the racial weakening of our Folk."

"The National Socialist Movement has, besides its delivery from the Jewish capitalist shackles imposed by a plutocratic-democratic, dwindling class of exploiters at home, pronounced its resolve to free the Reich from the shackles of the Diktat of Versailles abroad. The German demands for a revision were an absolute necessity, a matter of course for the existence and the honor of any great people. Posterity will some day come to regard them as exceedingly modest."

"What right do these people have to demand a share of property or even in administration?... The employer who accepts the responsibility for production also gives the workpeople their means of livelihood. Our greatest industrialists are not concerned with the acquisition of wealth or with good living, but, above all else, with responsibility and power. They have worked their way to the top by their own abilities, and this proof of their capacity – a capacity only displayed by a higher race – gives them the right to lead."

"I purchase the necessities of life with the productive power of German workmen. The results of our economic policy speak for us, not for the gold standard people. For we, the poor have abolished unemployment because we no longer pay homage to this madness, because we regard our entire economic existence as a production problem and no longer as a capitalistic problem. We placed the whole organized strength of the nation, the discipline of the entire nation, behind our economic policy. We explained to the nation that it was madness to wage internal economic wars between the various classes, in which they all perish together."

"In general, the primary aim of this cleansing process is only to restore a certain sound and natural balance, and, secondly, to remove from official positions of national significance those elements to which one cannot entrust Germany's survival or destruction. For it will not be possible to avoid, in the next few years, to make sure that certain processes which must not be communicated to the rest of the world for reasons of the highest national interest, will indeed remain secret. This can only be guaranteed by the inner homogeneity of the administrative bodies concerned."

"We want this people to be faithful, and you must learn fidelity. We want this people to be obedient, and you must practice obedience. We want this people to be peace-loving but also courageous, and you must therefore be peace-loving and at the same time courageous. We do not want this people to grow soft, but we want it to be hard so that it will be able to withstand the hardships of life. And for this you have to harden yourselves in your youth. You must learn to be hard, to stand privations without breaking down. We want this people to love honor and you already in the days of your youth must live up to this concept of honor."

"We are not interested in suppressing other nations. We do not want to see other nations among us. We want to live our own life. ... Germany and Poland are two nations, and these nations will live, and neither of them will be able to do away with the other. ... We have assured all our immediate neighbours of the integrity of their territory as far as Germany is concerned. That is no hollow phrase: it is our sacred will. ... The Sudetenland is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe. ... I have assured Mr. Chamberlain, and I emphasize it now, that when this problem is solved Germany has no more territorial problems in Europe."

"The struggle between the people and the hatred amongst them is being nurtured by very specific interested parties. It is a small, rootless, international clique that is turning the people against each other, that does not want them to have peace. It is the people who are at home both nowhere and everywhere, who do not have anywhere a soil on which they have grown up, but who live in Berlin today, in Brussels tomorrow, Paris the day after that, and then again in Prague or Vienna or London, and who feel at home everywhere. They are the only ones who can be addressed as international elements, because they conduct their business everywhere, but the people cannot follow them. The people are bounded to their soil, bounded to its fatherland, bounded to the possibilities of life that the state, the nation, offers."