Norman Thomas Quotations

If you want a symbolic gesture, don't burn the flag, wash it.

The secret of a good life is to have the right loyalties and hold them in the right scale of values.

To us Americans much has been given; of us much is required. With all our faults and mistakes, it is our strength in support of the freedom our forefathers loved which has saved mankind from subjection to totalitarian power.

Kennedy said that if we had nuclear war we'd kill 300 million people in the first hour. McNamara, who is a good businessman and likes to save, says it would be only 200 million.

The struggle is confused; our knight wins by no clean thrust of lance or sword, but the dragon somehow poops out, and decent democracy is victor.

After I asked him 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.

I'd rather see America save her soul than her face

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.

He who would save liberty must put his trust in democracy.

I now see Norman Thomas as indeed a liberal, but as a real, old-fashioned, unreconstructed liberal who believes in freedom and justice for everybody.

Rebellion per se is not a virtue. If it were, we would have some heroes on very low levels.

The central law of all wholesome life is reciprocity, mutuality. ... But the group is valuable only as it permits personalities, not automatons, to emerge.

I always get more applause than votes.

Harry Truman proves that old adage that any man can become President of the United States.

Peace will never be entirely secure until men everywhere have learned to conquer poverty without sacrificing liberty or security.

You may use different sorts of sentences and illustrations before different sorts of audiences, but you don't -- if you are wise -- talk down to any audience.

I walk where I choose to walk.

The very existence of armaments and great armies psychologically accustoms us to accept the philosophy of militarism. They inevitably increase fear and hate in the world.

There are some plain common-sense considerations applicable to all these attempts at world planning. They can be briefly stated: 1. To talk of blueprints for the future or building a world order is, if properly understood, suggestive, but it is also dangerous. Societies grow far more truly than they are built. A constitution for a new world order is never like a blueprint for a skyscraper.

The doctrine of thrift for the poor is dumb and cruel, like advising them to try and lift themselves by their bootstraps.

I am not the champion of lost causes, but the champion of causes not yet won.

Dissent... is a right essential to any concept of the dignity and freedom of the individual; it is essential to the search for truth in a world wherein no authority is infallible.

The difference between Democrats and Republicans is: Democrats have accepted some ideas of Socialism cheerfully, while Republicans have accepted them reluctantly

The Socialist Party will no longer be running a candidate for president. The Democratic Party is leading this country to Socialism much faster than we could ever hope to.

The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.