Norman Thomas: Deal

Norman Thomas was American Presbyterian minister and socialist. Explore interesting quotes on deal.
Norman Thomas: 30 quotes0 likes

“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

Debate with Barry Goldwater, University of Arizona campus, Tucson, Arizona, November 1961

“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

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

Debate with Barry Goldwater, University of Arizona campus, Tucson, Arizona, November 1961

“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

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.