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Top 200 William L. Shirer Quotes (2026 Update)
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William L. Shirer Quote: “But the greatest cause of his acceptance of his role in Nazi Germany was, without any doubt at all, that he had a job again and the assurance that he would keep it.”

151. “But the greatest cause of his acceptance of his role in Nazi Germany was, without any doubt at all, that he had a job again and the assurance that he would keep it.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “Like most great revolutionaries he could thrive only in evil times, at first when the masses were unemployed, hungry and desperate, and later when they were intoxicated by.”

152. “Like most great revolutionaries he could thrive only in evil times, at first when the masses were unemployed, hungry and desperate, and later when they were intoxicated by.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “PARIS, February 15 The fighting in Vienna ended today, the dispatches say. Dollfuss finished off the last workers with artillery and then went off to pray. Well, at least the Austrian Social Democrats fought, which is more than their comrades in Germany did. Apparently Otto Bauer and Julius Deutsch got safely over the Czech frontier. A good thing, or Dollfuss would have hanged them.”

153. “PARIS, February 15 The fighting in Vienna ended today, the dispatches say. Dollfuss finished off the last workers with artillery and then went off to pray. Well, at least the Austrian Social Democrats fought, which is more than their comrades in Germany did. Apparently Otto Bauer and Julius Deutsch got safely over the Czech frontier. A good thing, or Dollfuss would have hanged them.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “There were some ten million Jews living in 1939 in the territories occupied by Hitler’s forces. By any estimate it is certain that nearly half of them were exterminated by the Germans. This was the final consequence and the shattering cost of the aberration which came over the Nazi dictator in his youthful gutter days in Vienna and which he imparted to – or shared with – so many of his German followers.”

154. “There were some ten million Jews living in 1939 in the territories occupied by Hitler’s forces. By any estimate it is certain that nearly half of them were exterminated by the Germans. This was the final consequence and the shattering cost of the aberration which came over the Nazi dictator in his youthful gutter days in Vienna and which he imparted to – or shared with – so many of his German followers.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “The important ministries went to the conservatives, who were sure they had lassoed the Nazis for their own ends: Neurath.”

155. “The important ministries went to the conservatives, who were sure they had lassoed the Nazis for their own ends: Neurath.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “As the strife-ridden year of 1932 approached its end, Berlin was full of cabals, and of cabals within cabals.”

156. “As the strife-ridden year of 1932 approached its end, Berlin was full of cabals, and of cabals within cabals.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The.”

157. “No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “Adolf’s mother was his father’s second cousin, and an episcopal dispensation had to be obtained for the marriage.”

158. “Adolf’s mother was his father’s second cousin, and an episcopal dispensation had to be obtained for the marriage.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “They might not like the party’s demagoguery and its vulgarity, but on the other hand it was arousing the old feelings of German patriotism and nationalism which had been so muted during the first ten years of the Republic. It promised to lead the German people away from communism, socialism, trade-unionism and the futilities of democracy. Above all, it had caught fire throughout the Reich. It was a success.”

159. “They might not like the party’s demagoguery and its vulgarity, but on the other hand it was arousing the old feelings of German patriotism and nationalism which had been so muted during the first ten years of the Republic. It promised to lead the German people away from communism, socialism, trade-unionism and the futilities of democracy. Above all, it had caught fire throughout the Reich. It was a success.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “Yet I think no one who lived in the Third Reich could have failed to be impressed by Nietzsche’s influence on it. His books might be full, as Santayana said, of “genial imbecility” and “boyish blasphemies.” Yet Nazi scribblers never tired of extolling him.”

160. “Yet I think no one who lived in the Third Reich could have failed to be impressed by Nietzsche’s influence on it. His books might be full, as Santayana said, of “genial imbecility” and “boyish blasphemies.” Yet Nazi scribblers never tired of extolling him.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “Blood mixture and the resultant drop in the racial level is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is continued only in pure blood. All who are not of good race in this world are chaff.15.”

161. “Blood mixture and the resultant drop in the racial level is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is continued only in pure blood. All who are not of good race in this world are chaff.15.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “His fists raised, his cheeks flushed with rage, his whole body trembling, the man stood there in front of me, beside himself with fury and having lost all self-control. After each outburst Hitler would stride up and down the carpet edge, then suddenly stop immediately before me and hurl his next accusation in my face. He was almost screaming, his eyes seemed to pop out of his head and the veins stood out in his temples.”

162. “His fists raised, his cheeks flushed with rage, his whole body trembling, the man stood there in front of me, beside himself with fury and having lost all self-control. After each outburst Hitler would stride up and down the carpet edge, then suddenly stop immediately before me and hurl his next accusation in my face. He was almost screaming, his eyes seemed to pop out of his head and the veins stood out in his temples.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “Nazism appeared to be a dying cause. It had mushroomed on the country’s misfortunes; now that the nation’s outlook was suddenly bright it was rapidly withering away. Or so most Germans and foreign observers believed.”

163. “Nazism appeared to be a dying cause. It had mushroomed on the country’s misfortunes; now that the nation’s outlook was suddenly bright it was rapidly withering away. Or so most Germans and foreign observers believed.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “It was in the plunder not of material goods but of human lives that the mercifully short-lived New Order will be longest remembered. Here Nazi degradation sank to a level seldom experienced by man in all his time on earth.”

164. “It was in the plunder not of material goods but of human lives that the mercifully short-lived New Order will be longest remembered. Here Nazi degradation sank to a level seldom experienced by man in all his time on earth.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “Have we not reached a stage in history where no small nation is safe any longer, where they all must live on sufferance from the dictators? Gone are those pleasant nineteenth-century days when a country could remain neutral and at peace just by saying it wanted to.”

165. “Have we not reached a stage in history where no small nation is safe any longer, where they all must live on sufferance from the dictators? Gone are those pleasant nineteenth-century days when a country could remain neutral and at peace just by saying it wanted to.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “What interested Hitler was political power; economics could somehow take care of itself.”

166. “What interested Hitler was political power; economics could somehow take care of itself.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “Chamberlain’s obsequiousness, his exaggerated flattery, in these letters can be nauseating. “Your Majesty and your subjects,” he wrote, “have been born in a holy shrine,” and he informed Wilhelm that he had placed his portrait in his study opposite one of Christ by Leonardo so that while he worked he often paced up and down between the countenance of his Savior and his sovereign.”

167. “Chamberlain’s obsequiousness, his exaggerated flattery, in these letters can be nauseating. “Your Majesty and your subjects,” he wrote, “have been born in a holy shrine,” and he informed Wilhelm that he had placed his portrait in his study opposite one of Christ by Leonardo so that while he worked he often paced up and down between the countenance of his Savior and his sovereign.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “Thus Spake Zarathustra.”

168. “Thus Spake Zarathustra.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “And cannot it be added that it was one of the world’s misfortunes that so many in the interwar years either ignored or laughed off the Nazi aims which Hitler had taken the pains to put down in writing? Surely the anti-Semitic points of the program promulgated in the Munich beer hall on the evening of February 24, 1920, constituted a dire warning.”

169. “And cannot it be added that it was one of the world’s misfortunes that so many in the interwar years either ignored or laughed off the Nazi aims which Hitler had taken the pains to put down in writing? Surely the anti-Semitic points of the program promulgated in the Munich beer hall on the evening of February 24, 1920, constituted a dire warning.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “I thought of a bad pun: “I’m going from bad to Hearst.”

170. “I thought of a bad pun: “I’m going from bad to Hearst.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “He made it clear enough that there would be no “democratic nonsense” and that the Third Reich would be ruled by the Fuehrerprinzip, the leadership principle – that is, that it would be a dictatorship.”

171. “He made it clear enough that there would be no “democratic nonsense” and that the Third Reich would be ruled by the Fuehrerprinzip, the leadership principle – that is, that it would be a dictatorship.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “A crude Darwinism? A sadistic fancy? An irresponsible egoism? A megalomania?”

172. “A crude Darwinism? A sadistic fancy? An irresponsible egoism? A megalomania?”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “Indeed, in 1937 there appeared a journal called Deutsche Mathematik, and its first editorial solemnly proclaimed that any idea that mathematics could be judged nonracially carried “within itself the germs of destruction of German science.”

173. “Indeed, in 1937 there appeared a journal called Deutsche Mathematik, and its first editorial solemnly proclaimed that any idea that mathematics could be judged nonracially carried “within itself the germs of destruction of German science.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “It has done much damage that many reluctant Germans in high places spoke and wrote to Englishmen after the solution of the Czech question. The Fuehrer carried his point when you lost your nerve and capitulated too soon.”

174. “It has done much damage that many reluctant Germans in high places spoke and wrote to Englishmen after the solution of the Czech question. The Fuehrer carried his point when you lost your nerve and capitulated too soon.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “To explain the nineteenth century, that is, the contemporary world, one had to consider first what it had been bequeathed from ancient times. Three things, said Chamberlain: Greek philosophy and art, Roman law and the personality of Christ.”

175. “To explain the nineteenth century, that is, the contemporary world, one had to consider first what it had been bequeathed from ancient times. Three things, said Chamberlain: Greek philosophy and art, Roman law and the personality of Christ.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “Such were the men whom Hitler gathered around him in the early years for his drive to become dictator of a nation which had given the world a Luther, a Kant, a Goethe and a Schiller, a Bach, a Beethoven and a Brahms.”

176. “Such were the men whom Hitler gathered around him in the early years for his drive to become dictator of a nation which had given the world a Luther, a Kant, a Goethe and a Schiller, a Bach, a Beethoven and a Brahms.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “He, who was so monumentally intolerant by his very nature, was strangely tolerant of one human condition – a man’s morals.”

177. “He, who was so monumentally intolerant by his very nature, was strangely tolerant of one human condition – a man’s morals.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “When Germany defaulted in deliveries of timber, the hardheaded French Premier, who had been the wartime President of France, ordered French troops to occupy the Ruhr. The industrial heart of Germany, which, after the loss of Upper Silesia to Poland, furnished the Reich with four fifths of its coal and steel production, was cut off from the rest of the country.”

178. “When Germany defaulted in deliveries of timber, the hardheaded French Premier, who had been the wartime President of France, ordered French troops to occupy the Ruhr. The industrial heart of Germany, which, after the loss of Upper Silesia to Poland, furnished the Reich with four fifths of its coal and steel production, was cut off from the rest of the country.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “The suffering of his fellow Germans was not something to waste time sympathizing with, but rather to transform, cold-bloodedly and immediately, into political support for his own ambitions.”

179. “The suffering of his fellow Germans was not something to waste time sympathizing with, but rather to transform, cold-bloodedly and immediately, into political support for his own ambitions.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “PARIS, August 3 Hitler did what no one expected. He made himself both President and Chancellor. Any doubts about the loyalty of the army were done away with before the old field-marshal’s body was hardly cold. Hitler had the army swear an oath of unconditional obedience to him personally. The man is resourceful.”

180. “PARIS, August 3 Hitler did what no one expected. He made himself both President and Chancellor. Any doubts about the loyalty of the army were done away with before the old field-marshal’s body was hardly cold. Hitler had the army swear an oath of unconditional obedience to him personally. The man is resourceful.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “What is life? Life is the Nation. The individual must die anyway.”

181. “What is life? Life is the Nation. The individual must die anyway.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “Still, the talk went on, especially in the nation’s capital, though by the end of 1946, I noted, it was beginning to shift toward fear of Russian spies. Wild charges were beginning to be made that some of our most eminent statesmen were agents of Moscow and participants in a Communist conspiracy. Certain politicians were drumming up fear that our Communists, who couldn’t elect a dogcatcher in any state of the Union, were about to take over the Republic.”

182. “Still, the talk went on, especially in the nation’s capital, though by the end of 1946, I noted, it was beginning to shift toward fear of Russian spies. Wild charges were beginning to be made that some of our most eminent statesmen were agents of Moscow and participants in a Communist conspiracy. Certain politicians were drumming up fear that our Communists, who couldn’t elect a dogcatcher in any state of the Union, were about to take over the Republic.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “He could bear even less the disaster which befell his beloved Fatherland in November 1918. To him, as to almost all Germans, it was “monstrous” and undeserved. The German Army had not been defeated in the field. It had been stabbed in the back by the traitors at home.”

183. “He could bear even less the disaster which befell his beloved Fatherland in November 1918. To him, as to almost all Germans, it was “monstrous” and undeserved. The German Army had not been defeated in the field. It had been stabbed in the back by the traitors at home.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “The National Reich Church of Germany categorically claims the exclusive right and the exclusive power to control all churches within the borders of the Reich: it declares these to be national churches of the German Reich.”

184. “The National Reich Church of Germany categorically claims the exclusive right and the exclusive power to control all churches within the borders of the Reich: it declares these to be national churches of the German Reich.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “Reparations were to be fixed later, but a first payment of five billion dollars in gold marks was to be paid between 1919 and 1921, and certain deliveries in kind – coal, ships, lumber, cattle, etc. – were to be made in lieu of cash reparations.”

185. “Reparations were to be fixed later, but a first payment of five billion dollars in gold marks was to be paid between 1919 and 1921, and certain deliveries in kind – coal, ships, lumber, cattle, etc. – were to be made in lieu of cash reparations.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “The Reich Youth Leader was Baldur von Schirach, a romantically minded young man and an energetic organizer, whose mother was an American and whose great-grandfather, a Union officer, had lost a leg at Bull Run; he told his American jailers at Nuremberg that he had become an anti-Semite at the age of seventeen after reading a book called Eternal Jew, by Henry Ford.”

186. “The Reich Youth Leader was Baldur von Schirach, a romantically minded young man and an energetic organizer, whose mother was an American and whose great-grandfather, a Union officer, had lost a leg at Bull Run; he told his American jailers at Nuremberg that he had become an anti-Semite at the age of seventeen after reading a book called Eternal Jew, by Henry Ford.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “He was asked by his interrogator what his feelings were at the time, and he gave a memorable answer that gives insight into a phenomenon in the Third Reich that has seemed so elusive of human understanding. I had no feelings in carrying out these things because I had received an order to kill the eighty inmates in the way I already told you.”

187. “He was asked by his interrogator what his feelings were at the time, and he gave a memorable answer that gives insight into a phenomenon in the Third Reich that has seemed so elusive of human understanding. I had no feelings in carrying out these things because I had received an order to kill the eighty inmates in the way I already told you.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “This paralyzing blow to Germany’s economy united the people momentarily as they had not been united since 1914.”

188. “This paralyzing blow to Germany’s economy united the people momentarily as they had not been united since 1914.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “It had to allow Strasser, Goebbels and the crank Feder to beguile the masses with the cry that the National Socialists were truly “socialists” and against the money barons. On the other hand, money to keep the party going had to be wheedled out of those who had an ample supply of it.”

189. “It had to allow Strasser, Goebbels and the crank Feder to beguile the masses with the cry that the National Socialists were truly “socialists” and against the money barons. On the other hand, money to keep the party going had to be wheedled out of those who had an ample supply of it.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “The lower middle classes, all the millions of shopkeepers and small-salaried folk on whom Hitler had to draw for his mass support, shared in the general prosperity.”

190. “The lower middle classes, all the millions of shopkeepers and small-salaried folk on whom Hitler had to draw for his mass support, shared in the general prosperity.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “The great issues of peace and war will never be decided by majority vote, or any vote. We Americans have got to get that through our heads. That, and the fact that Russia, Great Britain and the United States, after due discussion, will largely determine the kind of world organization we are going to have.”

191. “The great issues of peace and war will never be decided by majority vote, or any vote. We Americans have got to get that through our heads. That, and the fact that Russia, Great Britain and the United States, after due discussion, will largely determine the kind of world organization we are going to have.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “The plotters finally had someone to give orders – without such, a German officer seemed lost, even a rebellious one, even on this crucial day – and they began to act.”

192. “The plotters finally had someone to give orders – without such, a German officer seemed lost, even a rebellious one, even on this crucial day – and they began to act.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “People are talking about the action of the British yesterday in sinking three French battleships in Oran to save them from falling into the hands of the Germans. The French, who have sunk to a depth below your imagination, say they will break relations with Britain. They say they trusted Hitler’s word not to use the French fleet against Britain. Pitiful. And yet there will be great bitterness throughout France. The Entente Cordiale is dead. We.”

193. “People are talking about the action of the British yesterday in sinking three French battleships in Oran to save them from falling into the hands of the Germans. The French, who have sunk to a depth below your imagination, say they will break relations with Britain. They say they trusted Hitler’s word not to use the French fleet against Britain. Pitiful. And yet there will be great bitterness throughout France. The Entente Cordiale is dead. We.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “On the contrary, they supported it with genuine enthusiasm. Somehow it imbued them with a new hope and a new confidence and an astonishing faith in the future of their country.”

194. “On the contrary, they supported it with genuine enthusiasm. Somehow it imbued them with a new hope and a new confidence and an astonishing faith in the future of their country.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “Three youths in Hanover who snatched a lady’s handbag in the black-out have been sentenced to death.”

195. “Three youths in Hanover who snatched a lady’s handbag in the black-out have been sentenced to death.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “The Fuehrer thanked Chamberlain for his words and told him that he had similar hopes. As he had already stated several times, the Czech problem was the last territorial demand which he had to make in Europe.”

196. “The Fuehrer thanked Chamberlain for his words and told him that he had similar hopes. As he had already stated several times, the Czech problem was the last territorial demand which he had to make in Europe.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “As the year of 1931 ran its uneasy course, with five million wage earners out of work, the middle classes facing ruin, the farmers unable to meet their mortgage payments, the Parliament paralyzed, the government floundering, the eighty-four-year-old President fast sinking into the befuddlement of senility, a confidence mounted in the breasts of the Nazi.”

197. “As the year of 1931 ran its uneasy course, with five million wage earners out of work, the middle classes facing ruin, the farmers unable to meet their mortgage payments, the Parliament paralyzed, the government floundering, the eighty-four-year-old President fast sinking into the befuddlement of senility, a confidence mounted in the breasts of the Nazi.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were.”

198. “Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “There are dark hints too that she was repelled by the masochistic inclinations of her lover, that this brutal tyrant in politics yearned to be enslaved by the woman he loved – a not uncommon urge in such men, according to the sexologists.”

199. “There are dark hints too that she was repelled by the masochistic inclinations of her lover, that this brutal tyrant in politics yearned to be enslaved by the woman he loved – a not uncommon urge in such men, according to the sexologists.”

— William L. Shirer

William L. Shirer Quote: “There was a spontaneous movement to raise a “National Fund of Thanksgiving” in Chamberlain’s honor, which he graciously turned down. Only Duff Cooper, the First Lord of the Admiralty, resigned from the cabinet, and when in the ensuing Commons debate Winston Churchill, still a voice in the wilderness, began to utter his memorable words, “We have sustained a total, unmitigated defeat,” he was forced to pause, as he later recorded, until the storm of protest against such a remark had subsided.”

200. “There was a spontaneous movement to raise a “National Fund of Thanksgiving” in Chamberlain’s honor, which he graciously turned down. Only Duff Cooper, the First Lord of the Admiralty, resigned from the cabinet, and when in the ensuing Commons debate Winston Churchill, still a voice in the wilderness, began to utter his memorable words, “We have sustained a total, unmitigated defeat,” he was forced to pause, as he later recorded, until the storm of protest against such a remark had subsided.”

— William L. Shirer

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