Great Throughts Treasury

"The art of leadership... consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention."

"A majority can never replace the individual. Just as a hundred fools do not make a wise man, a heroic decision is not likely to come from a hundred cowards."

"Belief is harder to shake than knowledge."

"The great masses of the people... will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one."

"By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed."

"The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force."

"I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few."

"In view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, [the masses] more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a little one."

"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."

"I recognize no moral law in politics. Politics is a game, in which every sort of trick is permissible, and in which the rules are constantly being changed by the players to suit themselves."

"The results at which I have to aim are only to be attained by systematic corruption of the possessing and governing classes. Business advantages, erotic satisfactions, and ambition, that is to say, the will to power, are the three stops in our propaganda organ."

"Politics is history in the making."