"For us the masses are simply shapeless material. Only under the hand of the artist can people be shaped from the masses, and a nation from the people […] We who are giving form to modern German politics feel ourselves to be artists entrusted with the lofty responsibility to form from the raw masses a full and solid image of the people."

Joseph Goebbels, 11 April 1933; cited in Michaud, The Cult of Art