Mein Kampf

by Adolf Hitler

can fight only for something that I love. I can love only what I respect. And in order to respect a thing I must at least have some knowledge of it.

Those who have no understanding of the political world around them have no right to criticize or complain.

Reading is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Its chief purpose is to help towards filling in the framework which is made up of the talents and capabilities that each individual possesses.

Democracy, as practised in Western Europe today, is the fore-runner of Marxism. In fact the latter would not be conceivable without the former. Democracy is the breeding-ground in which the bacilli of the Marxist world pest can grow and spread.

Because man has made laws he subsequently comes to think that he exists for the sake of the laws.

Any policy which aims at securing the existence of a nation by restricting the birth-rate robs that nation of its future.

Whatever mankind desires, that it will hope for and believe in.

It is not the business of him who lays down a theoretical programme to explain the various ways in which something can be put into practice. His task is to deal with the problem as such; and, therefore, he has to look to the end rather than the means. The important question is whether an idea is fundamentally right or not. The question of whether or not it may be difficult to carry it out in practice is quite another matter.

All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true in itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large scale falsehood.

It was not by accident that man conquered the Black Plague more easily than he conquered tuberculosis. The first appeared in terrifying waves of death that shook the whole of mankind, the other advances insidiously; the first induces terror, the other gradual indifference. The result is, however, that men opposed the first with all the energy they were capable of, whilst they try to arrest tuberculosis by feeble means. Thus man has mastered the Black Plague, while tuberculosis still gets the better of him.

Financial operations succeed easier than war operations.

He must always concentrate his efforts to one definitely limited stage of his progress which has to be completed before the next step be attempted. Those who do not endeavour to realize their aims step by step and who do not concentrate their energy in reaching the individual stages, will never attain the final objective. At some stage or other they will falter and fail. This systematic way of approaching an objective is an art in itself and always calls for the expenditure of every ounce of energy in order to conquer step after step of the road.

Only those who have nothing of value to give to the world will oppose everything that already exists and would have it destroyed at all costs.

One has good grounds to be suspicious in regard to any new idea, or any doctrine or philosophy, any political or economical movement, which tries to deny everything that the past has produced or to present it as inferior and worthless.

The great masses of a nation are not composed of philosophers. For the masses of the people especially, faith is absolutely the only basis of a moral outlook on life.

‘politics is the art of the possible.’

He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist.

A man may acquire and use a new language without much trouble; but it is only his old ideas that he expresses through the new language.