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.

Ronald Reagan is on record attributing this quote to Thomas in a 1961 radio address. According to Reagan, Thomas said this in 1927. Reagan biographer Lou Cannon notes that this was a suspect quotation, and that he could find no evidence of it. Thomas did say that both major political parties had borrowed items from the Socialist Party platform. Cannon, Lou. Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power. New York: PublicAffairs Books, 2003. ISBN 1-586-48030-8 (p. 125).

The quote appears in print in the Congressional Record (vol. 109, p. A1267) for 21 February 1963. Here, M. G. Snyder of Kentucky gives it as part of a quote from an editorial from "Farm and Ranch magazine" by Thomas J. Anderson.