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Norman Thomas
22 quotes
“To what extent may we expect to have the economics of fascism without its politics?”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Is the ‘New Deal’ Socialism? A Socialist Leader Answers,” New York Times (June 18, 1933)
“The heretic may be very irritating, he may be decidedly wrong, but the attempt to choke heresy or dissent from the dominant opinion by coercing the conscience is an incalculable danger to society. If war makes it necessary, it is the last count in the indictment against war.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: War's Heretics: A Plea for the Conscientious Objector", in The Survey magazine, August 1917. Reprinted in Arthur Weinberg, Lila Shaffer Weinberg; Instead of violence : writings by the great advocates of peace and nonvio…
“There is the sharp and bitter division between Socialists and Communists, principally on the important question of method and tactics. In general, however, Socialists propose to bring about as rapidly as possible the social ownership of land, natural resources and the principle means of production, thereby abolishing the possibility of the existence of any class on an income derived not from work but from ownership. This does not necessarily mean that no man will have a home he can call his own. His right will rest on use and not on a title deed.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Why I Am A Socialist", Princeton Alumni Weekly, 1928. Reprinted in Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John Campbell McMillian, The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Tradition, The New Press, 2011.
“Fascism glorifies both militarism and war. It is as surely a menace to the peace as to the liberty of mankind.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Pacifist's Dilemma", The Nation magazine, January 16, 1937. Quoted in Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation 1865-1990: Selections from the Independent Magazine of Politics and Culture. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press,19…
“Such is the logic of totalitarianism... [that] communism, whatever it was originally, is today Red fascism.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1046 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Which Way America—Fascism, Communism, Socialism or Democracy?" (March 16, 1948) Town Meeting Bulletin. Vol. XIII. pp. 19–20 and Adler & Paterson, 1970, p. 1046, footnote 4.
“After I asked him [a student] what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the cost to others, to win advancement. No decent society can tolerate that definition.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Legacy for the Young from Norman Thomas", Life Magazine, Mar 14, 1969
“[B]oth the communist and fascists revolutions definitely abolished laissez-faire capitalism in favor of one or another kind and degree of state capitalism. In neither form, fascist or communist, did the masses, through any sort of democratic process, either as workers or citizens, control the basic means of production and distribution .”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Socialist’s Faith, W. W. Norton, 1951, p. 55.
“The similarities of the economics of the New Deal to the economics of Mussolini's corporative state or Hitler's totalitarian state are both close and obvious.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939, Wolfgang Schivelbusch, (2006) Metropolitan Books, pp. 28-29.
“By every test of civil liberty Russian life is at least as much regimented as in the Fascist countries. The press, schools, and radio are if anything more absolutely controlled. ... To strike is as dangerous in Russia as in Germany. . . .”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Norman Thomas: Respectable Rebel, Murray B. Seidler, Syracuse University Press, 1961, p. 187
“The ultimate values in the world are those of personality and no theory of the state, whether socialistic or capitalistic, is valid, which makes it master, not servant, of man.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Norman Thomas: Respectable Rebel, Murray B. Seidler, Syracuse University Press (1961) p. 27
“It is a rather fascist performance, to exclude a man [Thomas] who has been a loyal supporter of Russian recognition from the days when it was dangerous to support that cause in America down to today.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Sir Stafford Cripps, (March 19, 1937), as quoted in Norman Thomas: Respectable Rebel, Murray B. Seidler, Syracuse University Press (1961) p. 181, when the Russian government denied Thomas a visa
“Stalin's infamous pact with his fellow dictator has at last made the issue plain: His Communism is the ally not the foe of Fascism; the enemy, not the friend of democracy and the worker's cause.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Socialist Call, September 2, 1939, p. 3, as quoted in Norman Thomas: Respectable Rebel, Murray B. Seidler, Syracuse University Press (1961) p. 187
“In no way was Hitler the tool of big business. He was its lenient master. So was Mussolini except that he was weaker.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Socialist’s Faith, W. W. Norton, 1951, p. 53. Former presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.
“The problem that confronts some of you younger ones – you’ve got to find an alternative to war. War is something men have hated but yet cherished. Out of wars have come profit of various sorts, power, glory. Sometimes out of them has become a defense of freedom. But you will not get that out of the kind of war we fight now with the weapons that our great scientists have given us. We have got to find a substitute for war, and the substitute isn’t surrender.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Debate with Barry Goldwater, University of Arizona campus, Tucson, Arizona, November 1961
“You will keep America out of the hands of communists by what you do here, you will keep it by making it seem unnecessary to the disadvantaged. It has been the New Deal, it has been democratic socialism which has been a major force from keeping the world from communism.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Debate with Barry Goldwater, University of Arizona campus, Tucson, Arizona, November 1961
“All our rulers have said that war is unthinkable, and then we think about it almost all the time. We’ve got to make it unthinkable.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Debate with Barry Goldwater, University of Arizona campus, Tucson, Arizona, November 1961
“For I can assure you that in any war, even if it does not become a world war, I do not think there will be a victor who can do much. There may be one less badly off than the other. One side or the other may have sued first for peace. The destruction will be so great, the moral erosion of the experience will be so great, that it is idle to think you’ll find liberty, walking serenely among the corpses of the dead and the agonies of the dying. There are other things to do than that if we want democracy and freedom to live; there have to be other things to do than that.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Debate with Barry Goldwater, University of Arizona campus, Tucson, Arizona, November 1961
“I shall not stir multitudes, but may persuade my readers when I say that democratic socialism, not sure of all answers, not promising sudden utopias, is the world's best hope.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Socialism Re-Examined 1963.
“Roosevelt's New Deal was not the best alternative, but it certainly was a better alternative than had been offered to the problems of our times, and it was offered with an elan, a spirit that made things go and which tended to lift up people's hearts. In retrospect, I wouldn't change many of the criticisms I then made. Yet the net result was certainly the salvation of America, and it produced peacefully, after some fashion not calculated by Roosevelt, the Welfare State and almost a revolution.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1884 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in 1967. Quoted in Harry Fleischman, Norman Thomas; a Biography: 1884-1968: With a New Chapter - The Final Years. Harry Fleischman, Norton, 1969. Also quoted in Alden Whitman, Come to Judgment, Penguin Books, …
“When the state seeks to compel a man who believes that war is wrong, not merely to abstain from actual sedition, as is its right, but to participate in battle, it inevitably compels him, however deep his love of country, to raise once more the cry, "We ought to obey God rather than man". He acknowledges with Romain Rolland that he is the citizen of two fatherlands and his supreme loyalty is to the City of God of which he is a builder. Some conscientious objectors may substitute mankind or humanity for God, but their conviction remains the same; only the free spirit can finally determine for a man the highest service he can render.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: War's Heretics: A Plea for the Conscientious Objector", in The Survey magazine, August 1917. Reprinted in Arthur Weinberg, Lila Shaffer Weinberg; Instead of violence : writings by the great advocates of peace and nonvio…
“We are socialists because we believe we live now in a world that requires a great deal of thoughtful planning ahead of time. We are socialists because we live in a world that is peculiarly interdependent, and to a degree quite unknown in earlier times. [...] We are socialists because we believe in this kind of world - in this anarchy of nations - we need to have a concept that the great purpose of life is to manage our extraordinary scientific and technological achievements and our resources for the common good. It’s not easy and it cannot be the byproduct of a game where everybody seeks the maximum profit for himself, either men or nations in that role.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Debate with Barry Goldwater, University of Arizona campus, Tucson, Arizona, November 1961
“We are socialists because we believe this income which we all cooperate in making isn’t divided as it ought to be. [...] We do reward men according to deed. We do reward or give to people according to need. No religion would be possible in which that wasn’t done. There are the young, there are the old, there are many whom we have to reward according to their need. But in spite of improvements that have been made, and especially perhaps by my liberal friends who aren't just sure how far to go...we still have a society where there's a great deal of reward not according to deed, not according to need, but according to breed - the choice of your grandfather is very important. And according to the successful greed, which operates not in terms of great contributions to men, but in terms of manipulations of one sort of another.”
Norman Thomas (1884–1968) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Debate with Barry Goldwater, University of Arizona campus, Tucson, Arizona, November 1961