“I had by this time heard a number of his public speeches and was beginning to understand the pattern of their appeal. The first secret lay in his choice of words. Every generation develops its own vocabulary of catchwords and phrases, and these date thoughts and utterances. My own father talked like a contemporary of Bismarck, the people of my own age bore the stamp of Wilhelm II, but Hitler had caught the casual camaraderie of the trenches, and without stooping to slang, except for special effects, managed to talk like a member of his audience. In describing the difficulties of the housewife without enough money to buy the buy the food her family needed in the Viktualien Market he would produce just the phrases she would have used herself to describe her difficulties, if she had been able to formulate them. Where other national orators gave the painful impression of talking down to their audience, he had his priceless gift of expressing exactly their own thoughts.”

Quoted in "Hitler: The Missing Years" - Page 67 - by Ernst Hanfstaengl, John Toland - 1994

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I had by this time heard a number of his public speeches and was beginning to understand the pattern of their appeal. T…" by Ernst Hanfstaengl?
Ernst Hanfstaengl photo
Ernst Hanfstaengl 9
German businessman 1887–1975

Related quotes

“No philosopher understands his predecessors until he has re-thought their thought in his own contemporary terms”

P. F. Strawson (1919–2006) British philosopher

Source: Individuals (1959), pp. xiv-xv.
Context: Metaphysics has a long and distinguished history, and it is consequently unlikely that there are any new truths to be discovered in descriptive metaphysics. But this does not mean that the task of descriptive metaphysics has been, or can be, done once for all. It has constantly to be done over again. If there are no new truths to be discovered, there are old truths to be rediscovered. For though the central subject-matter of descriptive metaphysics does not change, the critical and analytical idiom of philosophy changes constantly. Permanent relationships are described in an impermanent idiom, which reflects both the age’s climate of thought and the individual philosopher’s personal style of thinking. No philosopher understands his predecessors until he has re-thought their thought in his own contemporary terms; and it is characteristic of the very greatest philosophers, like Kant and Aristotle, that they, more than any others, repay this effort of re-thinking

John Steinbeck photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Arthur Rubinstein photo

“My father, good or bad, mistakes or no, had a direct line from his heart to the music to the people, to the audience. He played with logic and his own inner truth.”

Arthur Rubinstein (1887–1982) Polish-American classical pianist

John Rubinstein — reported in Kevin Kelly (February 22, 1981) "Rubinstein a Chip Off Rubinstein: John Says His Father's Music Shaped His Approach to Acting", Boston Globe.
About

Colum McCann photo
George Orwell photo
Fulton J. Sheen photo

“Hitler had no need of God: in his own conceit, he was a god.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: The Armor of God (1943), Ch. 1, p. 4

Kim Stanley Robinson photo

“Every generation is its own secret society.”

Source: Green Mars (1993), Chapter 9, “The Spur of the Moment” (p. 480)

Brent Weeks photo

“It wouldn’t be the first time his sharp tongue had cut his own throat.”

Source: The Way of Shadows (2008), Chapter 9 (p. 64)

Related topics