Norman Thomas Quotes

Why do we have 47 million people without health care? Because America has become about 'me'. What's happened to 'we' as a people? I believe in that and that resonates to most people.

Freedom is not worth fighting for if it means no more than license for everyone to get as much as he can for himself.

Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by maudlin sentimentality, but by the higher duty I owe myself.

Our civilization is built on competition, and competition evolves itself crime to so acute an infatuation has the lunacy of self-interest carried our dominant opinion.

All men are born free. Some are certainly endowed with grater intelligence, stronger will or a greater portion of wealth than others, but that gives them—the cleverer, the stronger, the richer—not the least right to rule over the duller, the weaker, the poorer. God, the Father of us all, has made mankind, without exception, to be happy, and so the obligation is laid on us, as far as is possible, to make each other happy.

The possession of wealth does not confer upon the wealthy the right to take advantage of the less fortunate.

A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.

For a solitary animal egoism is a virtue that tends to preserve and improve the species: in any kind of community it becomes a destructive vice.

I feel that the world is increasingly about the bottom line, and not so much about human respect or human dignity. In that regard, people who care about other people will not be in a position to make choices and do things that other people who they're competing against will get to do.

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

I was taught in school that I have to look out for number one. That was against everything that I intuitively felt.

The kind of society which we still have is maybe, in some cases, getting worse. Competition is becoming a virtue. Intense competition drives people to go more and more into self-interest. Even to see other folks as competition.

Liberals worry that what's best for the individual might not be better for the public at large. But that philosophy assumes something vicious about each and every one of us. It assumes we only care about ourselves.

Do we exert our own liberties without injury to others - we exert them justly; do we exert them at the expense of others - unjustly. And, in thus doing, we step from the sure platform of liberty upon the uncertain threshold of tyranny.

We should govern our actions by assuming that people are more good than bad. Whereas, most of our social policies dictate that people are more bad than good. That you know if you do something, it'll be seized by the rich to exploit the poor.

There is always greed. There is nothing wrong with greed.

Politicians may do as they please, so long as they violate no rule of right, no principle of justice, no law of God; but in no world, in no order, or condition, have men the right to do wrong.

Economic Man faces a merciless world alone and unaided, his hand against every other's.

Greed is good.

The growth of New England was a result of the aggregate efforts of a busy multitude, each in his narrow circle toiling for himself, to gather competence or wealth. The expansion of New France was the achievement of a gigantic ambition striving to grasp a continent. It was a vain attempt.

… as a rule capitalists and entrepreneurs are not saints excelling in the virtue of self-denial. But neither are their critics saintly.

… a creed of greed

What would you think of me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death?

Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.

If you ask me what is at the core of what I write, it isn't about 'rights', it's about justice. Justice is a grand, beautiful, revolutionary idea.