Dorothy Thompson Quotes

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.

Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.

Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.

There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth.

Charm has an occasional contrary concomitant, heartlessness. The virtuoso is so pleased by the way he produces his effects that he disregards the audience. Once Dorothy Thompson came in to see FDR after a comparatively long period of having been snubbed by the White House—although she had deserted Wilkie for Roosevelt during the campaign just concluded, and as a result had been fired from The New York Herald Tribune, the best job she ever had. Roosevelt greeted her with the remark, "Dorothy, you lost your job, but I kept mine—ha, ha!

Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.

Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict

The most destructive element in the human mind is fear.

...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 [of] 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.

When liberty is taken away by force, it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished by default it can never be recovered.

Fear grows in darkness; if you think there's a bogeyman around, turn on the light.

There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth.” —Dorothy Thompson

His tranquil smile deepened. ‘We shall meet in Malta, Jerott. Pray for us all. God has been good tonight.’ ‘Thompson has been rather splendid too,’ said Lymond cordially. and waved a cheerful farewell.

I feel successful 3–4 days a month. The other days I feel like I’m barely accomplishing the minimum or that I’m a loser. I have imposter syndrome so even when I get compliments they are difficult to take and I just feel like I’m a bigger fraud than before. I feel the worst when I get so paralyzed by fear that I end up huddled in bed and fall further and further behind. To make myself feel more successful I spend real time with my daughter every day, even if it’s just huddling under a blanket and watching Doctor Who reruns on TV. I also try to remind myself that people like Dorothy Parker and Hunter S. Thompson struggled as well, and that this struggle might make me stronger, if it doesn’t first destroy me.

Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live in every experience, painful or joyous, to live in gratitude for every moment, to live abundantly.

The Oakland chapter’s “bondsman” is a handsome middle-aged woman with platinum-blond hair named Dorothy Connors. She has a pine-paneled office, drives a white Cadillac and treats the Angels gently, like wayward children. “These boys are the backbone of the bail-bond business,” she says. “Ordinary customers come and go, but just like clockwork, the Angels come down to my office each week to make their payments. They really pay the overhead.

Among the guests who appeared on Information, Please were Ben Hecht, George S. Kaufman, Basil Rathbone, Dorothy Thompson, Lillian Gish, Alexander Woollcott, H. V. Kaltenborn, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Carl Sandburg, Albert Spalding, Boris Karloff, Marc Connelly, Dorothy Parker, Beatrice Lillie, and Postmaster General James Farley. Prizefighter Gene Tunney surprised the nation with his knowledge of Shakespeare. Moe Berg, Boston Red Sox catcher, had a

At the edge of the still, dark pool that was the sea, at the brimming edge of freedom where no boat was to be seen, she spoke the first words of the few they were to exchange. ‘I cannot swim. You know it?” In the dark she saw the flash of his smile. ‘Trust me.’ And he drew her with a strong hand until the green phosphorescence beaded her ankles, and deeper, and deeper, until the thick milk-warm water, almost unfelt, was up to her waist. She heard him swear feelingly to himself as the salt water searched out, discovered his burns. Then with a rustle she saw his pale head sink back into the quiet sea and at the same moment she was gripped and drawn after him, her face to the stars, drawn through the tides with the sea lapping like her lost hair at her cheeks, the drive of his body beneath her pulling them both from the shore. They were launched on the long journey towards the slim shape, black against glossy black, which was the brigantine, with Thompson on board.

            One day upon Golgotha                  Three men died             A thief—the Christ—a thief                  Were crucified.             A cross of hope for one,                  Hope not too late             His fellow died upon                  A cross of hate.             Between these two—all space                  Were not more wide—             Between them—and for both                  Christ Jesus died DOROTHY B. THOMPSON                        

spectacle of Dorothy Thompson at Madison Square Garden — tall, fair, blue-eyed, and laughing in her evening gown at twenty-two thousand “little men” — was not a thing to be forgotten.

Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live

I really was put out of Germany for the crime of blasphemy... My offense was to think that Hitler is just an ordinary man,

If the world is going to be regarded as a continual hunting, fishing and fighting expedition,” said Dorothy, “— if it is to be regarded in terms of the primitive male activities — then it will go on as it has gone on, with booms, depressions, and wars... It’s going to be Caesars and World Wars throughout a long future,

temper is the most destructive of human faults. It supplants trust with fear; it poisons love; it breeds aversion or indifference; it sterilizes emotion.

There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth. - Dorothy Thompson

Historian Dorothy Thompson has pointed out the double standard at work here. A king's having a mistress was regrettable, but ultimately acceptable. The possibility, though, of a female ruler having a sexual relationship outside of marriage, causes dismay and prurient ridicule.

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.

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 [of] the Incorporated National Will.... When our dictator turns up you can depend on that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American.' Dorothy Thompson qtd in

Dorothy Thompson was one of America’s most prominent international journalists. She had famously interviewed Hitler for Cosmopolitan magazine and had been warning the world about the dangers of the Nazi regime in Germany since the early thirties.

At some point it’s irresponsible not to connect what a man says with what he does... “Who Goes Nazi,” Dorothy Thompson’s famous Harper’s piece from 1941, sprang to the collective mind... None of the men I had in mind were Nazis. None resembled the men who’d marched through Charlottesville with tiki torches shouting, “You will not replace us!” But there was another spin on the game, and this was the one that worried me: Who in a showdown would accept the subjugation of women as a necessary political concession? Who would make peace with patriarchy if it meant a nominal win, or defend the accused for the sake of stability? The answer was more men than I’d been prepared to believe. I’d have to work harder not to alienate them, if only to make it harder for them to sell me out.

Age is not measured by years. Nature does not equally distribute energy. Some people are born old and tired while others are going strong at seventy. --Dorothy Thompson

Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.” Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961)

continual dissipation of American forces and morale. She was “petrified” about the consequences for America of making politics subservient indefinitely to military strategy.

For the record, Welles was contrite. Forty years later—removed from the threat of mob assault—he confessed only to amusement, and amazement that people could be so gullible. For three full days the fate of The Mercury Theater on the Air hung in the balance. No one at CBS could decide, as Houseman told it, whether they were heroes or scoundrels. Dorothy Thompson seemed to speak for the majority: after pronouncing the broadcast unbelievable from start to finish, she lauded Welles for demonstrating how vulnerable the country was in such a panic. As for Welles, he was an overnight star on the world stage. Campbell Soups stepped up with an offer to sponsor, and in December the show moved up to first-class status.

It is a fantastic commentary on the inhumanity of our times that for thousands and thousands of people, a piece of paper with a stamp on it is the difference between life and death.

DOROTHY THOMPSON, crusading commentator whose radio work supplemented her widely read “On the Record” newspaper column to make her one of the most controversial news personalities of two decades. She became an international celebrity in 1934 after a series of magazine articles got her thrown out of Germany by Hitler. Her tirades against Hitler grew so heated that her sponsor, Pall Mall Cigarettes, was uncomfortable, and her NBC contract was not renewed when it expired in May 1938.

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis. Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them. Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi.