Dorothy Thompson quotes - page 3

Dorothy Thompson was an influential American journalist and radio broadcaster, often called the "First Lady of American Journalism." Her reporting and commentary made a significant impact on public opinion in the United States during the early to mid-20th century. She became especially well known for her outspoken criticism of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. Here are 84 of her quotes:

To be a liberal means to believe in human freedom. It means to believe in human beings. It means to champion that form of social and political order which releases the greatest amount of human energy; permits greatest liberty for individuals and groups, in planning and living their lives; cherishes freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and freedom of action, limited by only one thing: the protection of the freedom of others.

Dorothy Thompson

What confuses the mind of the average American is that the American collectivist calls himself a Liberal, and has pre-empted a word which has a totally different philosophy behind it. The Fascists and Communists know that Liberalism is the enemy. But the American collectivist, who calls himself a Liberal, believes that he can have the better of two worlds.

Dorothy Thompson

The Communists and Fascists are engaged in a sham struggle of ideas. The actual forms of government under which Fascists and Communists live are almost identical. One claims to abolish private property and attacks the other as its defender. But the property of Russia is not controlled by the people, but by the bureaucracy, operating in the name of the people, just as it is in Germany, where you get your head cut off if you try to hold your property in gold or in anything except German paper.

Dorothy Thompson

The word ‘Liberal' has now become so variously interpreted that few people know what it means. Those who use it most precisely today are the Fascists and the Communists. They know what Liberalism is, and they are against it. For these people are collectivists.

Dorothy Thompson

Our children, it seems to me, learn the history of events, but are woefully unversed in the history of thought... The result of this kind of teaching is to diminish all respect for intellect, reason and experience.

Dorothy Thompson

The attempts of some of our school authorities to prevent students from learning anything about Communism, for instance, are futile. Newspapers exist; correspondents report; people travel. It is quite impossible to act as though Russia did not exist, or were as inaccessible and mysterious as Mars.

Dorothy Thompson

Today in Germany the winner of the last Nobel peace prize is considered a traitor, and to attend any peace meeting would make one a candidate for a concentration camp. Today in Italy there is only one morality: the power and glory of Italy. Today in Russia all children are brought up to despise and hate ‘the class enemy.'

Dorothy Thompson

I have seen a German youth camp, housing six thousand children around the age of ten, display in tree-high letters the words: ‘You were born to die for Germany!' I have seen babies of six and seven, black-shirted and belted, march in Italy in military drill. I have seen children in Russia kindergartens taught how to adjust gas masks and the strategy of trench warfare.

Dorothy Thompson

I see the nations of the world arming in ways that have never before been known in the modern world. I am not speaking of new forms of poison gas, heavier or swifter bombing planes, or parachutes to land brigades of soldiers... What is revolutionary is that the minds of men, women and children are being deliberately trained, directed, distorted, by every conceivable instrument of education and propaganda, to make them tolerant of war, receptive of war, prepared for war, lovers of war. The greatest menace in the world today is not poison gas. There are gas masks against that. The menace is poisoned words, poisoned ideas.

Dorothy Thompson

Democracy for most of us is not an ism. It is a way of life. It does not represent any rigid form of state or national organization. It is something constantly developing and unfolding, changing from day to day, making mistakes, advancing in this direction and retreating in that, but always animated by a few fundamental ideas: that men have a right to live their own lives, provided they don't tread too heavily on other people's toes;...

Dorothy Thompson

A great many people say that there is a great battle going on in the world: between Fascism and Communism. Fascism is represented as Capitalism in its ultimate and final form, when it controls the state wholly. Communism is represented as the final expression of democracy. But this theory was invented by fascists and communists. To a democrat, looking on, it seems like a sham battle.

Dorothy Thompson

It became the fashion a few years ago to say that civil liberties meant nothing to the average man; that his freedom was just freedom to starve. But it also happens that the ‘free' countries are those which the underprivileged are best fed.

Dorothy Thompson

[P]rivate enterprise and initiative, willing to take risks in the hope of gain, allowed to function in freedom, have produced the greatest wealth ever know in the history of mankind. And that if you stop this process and turn everything over to government, the activity will slow down, inventiveness will cease, and we shall get not equalization of riches, but equalization of poverty.

Dorothy Thompson

Capitalism is the use of wealth in private hands to create more wealth. It is the existing world-wide modern system of organizing production and trade by private enterprise, free to seek profit by employing human labor. Its defenders argue that never, since the beginning of history, has there been such a thing as perfect equality and harmony;... and every know period of history had rich and poor, and that actually modern technology, plus liberal democracy, plus an increased social sense, plus Capitalism, have created the modern world, and that as far as the standard of living of the average man is concerned the modern world surpasses all previous epochs of history.

Dorothy Thompson

The production of wealth by private enterprise is called Capitalism. It is hard to call Capitalism one of the isms, because Capitalism is not a creed at all. Capitalism was not ‘invented' by any sociologist or philosopher. Capitalists never called themselves that. The word was invented by socialists to describe what they hated.

Dorothy Thompson

Millions of Germans follow Hitler because he has proclaimed war upon the banks, upon the trusts, upon ‘loan-capital.' He has asserted time and time again that he will abolish the rule of one class by another.

Dorothy Thompson

And yet, [Hitler] is not without a certain charm. But it is the soft, almost feminine charm of the Austrian! When he talks it is with a broad Austrian dialect.

Dorothy Thompson

No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument - the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say "Heil" to him, nor will they call him "Führer" or "Duce." But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of "O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!"

Dorothy Thompson

The communist theory is that a world war is inevitable; that in that war, if they play their cards well, the democracies will be lined up against the fascist dictatorships, and that the result of the war will be the triumph of Communism all over the world. Their chief program now is to get the democracies so lined up.

Dorothy Thompson

Every play which is produced-and for that matter, every book that is published, every picture which is exhibited, every film which is turned-is subjected to the Board of Censors... Romantic love in even its purest phases is not thought to be a fitting subject for consideration of citizens of a communist state;. . . the sex play is unknown in modern Russia... There remains as the ubiquitous theme for plays: revolution, with all the patriotic and nationalistic connotations which have grown up around it; heroism, sacrifice for the nation and class; consciousness of solidarity with one's fellow proletarians; common suffering; great adventures with new ideas; great prospects for future machine age which is to be a sort of Russian-communist Americanism.

Dorothy Thompson

The New Deal has enormously increased the sense of awareness; it has contributed radically to the breakdown of confidence in the forms and procedures of yesterday. But it has offered us no comprehensible picture of a future in which we can believe. We cannot believe that this vague eleemosynary humanitarianism, coupled with ruthless aggrandizement by politicians, is a picture of a new heaven and a new earth.

Dorothy Thompson

The architects of the Constitution had the intention of making a republican and federal government which would endure with stability, insure justice, promote the general welfare and be proof against usurpation, either by the few and the rich or by the poor and the many. For the founding of a republic they had guides. For a federal system they had none. But they thoroughly believed that help could be found in the successes and failures of the past. They knew all about the ‘class struggle'-so, for that matter, did the Greek philosophers, although you would think from our young socialist friends that Karl Marx was the first person ever to notice it. They knew all about Fascism and its causes, although they called it by another name.

Dorothy Thompson