60 quotes
For already the myth is being carefully built up. Hitler is to be the Messiah of organic evolution—the anti-Christ of the will to power, which is not a will to national power but a will to power per se, the liberation of the lustfully destructive from any inhibitions whatsoever.
Let the Record Speak (1939)
It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives. When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.
A Frenchman who is in close touch with the situation at home told me this week, 'We would have Fascism in France already if Germany and Italy had not done it first.'
Let the Record Speak (1939)
Once in power, will he want to risk another French invasion? What, becomes, then, of his sonorous calls to arms? He will have to maintain law and order. What becomes then, of his promises to a revolutionary working class?
I Saw Hitler (1932)
Liberalism is not being killed by dictators. Liberalism is committing suicide—out of despair and a bad conscience. What liberalism needs is a revival, in the evangelical sense of the word. It needs to admit its sins, as the basis of renewing its life.
Dorothy Thompson's Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
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's Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
For it is no longer possible to regard Fascism as the friend of Christianity. And in making a cultural treaty with Hitler, Franco has laid Spain wide open to the penetration of Nazi ideology, which has been repeatedly denounced by the Pope himself as anti-Christian.
Let the Record Speak (1939)
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's Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
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's Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
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's Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
The contribution of Communism to the nihilism of democratic despair has been to shear humanism off democracy, to reduce the concept of democracy to crass materialism, to interpret life in terms of bread alone. The Nazis, as anti-humanistic as the Communists, have elevated the Communist Have-Not doctrine into a war cry for the Have-Not states.
Let the Record Speak (1939)
No citizen should be permitted to become a member of or contribute to any organization whose members are pledged, or have ever been pledged, to tender prior loyalty to any state other than the United States, or to defend any state other than the United States in case of war, except as in such a war the United States might formally be allied with another power.
The Truth about Communism (1948)
The Liberal is distinguished from the Conservative and the Radical, not only by his basic philosophy but by his methods. Never does he believe that a good end justifies and evil means. He seeks to find everything that binds men together, rather than what divides them, for he loves persuasion and detests coercion.
Dorothy Thompson's Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Russians would be, or are, willing to agree to a partition of the world into 'orbits' or 'spheres of influence,' along familiar lines of power politics. Those who hold this hope have been confusing Stalin with Hitler. Hitler was for the partition of the world, and tried to sell that idea to the British. But Stalin is a Bolshevist—that is, a totalist.
The Truth about Communism (1948)
This kind of thinking is taking a long view, in which one must also count the imponderables, such as the effort of prolonged depression upon restless social forces; the inevitable necessity for National Socialism to move very far to the Left, the possible revolt of the people everywhere against dawdling tactics of their leaders.
Let the Record Speak (1939)
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's Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
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's Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
The easiest way to simplify society is to reduce it to a military organization. That is the most primitive form of social organization. And that is precisely what is being done. The unit of communal life shrinks. Wealth, prosperity, inventiveness, choice, demand are subordinated to simplified nationalistic aims. The very mind which created the liberal universe becomes atrophied through disuse.
Dorothy Thompson's Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
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's Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict — alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.
Misattributed