Peace & Justice Activists Posters “Th...-To...-”
with curriculum enrichment resources for social studies classrooms, teachers, home schoolers, offices.

Norman Thomas
Dorothy Thompson

Henry David Thoreau
Leo Tolstoy

Norman Thomas
b. 11-20-1884; Marion, OH
d. 12-19-1968

Norman Thomas, who was educated and served as a Presbyterian minister, was philosophically a Christian socialist advocating relatively equal power relations, self-management, collective decision-making rather than hierarchical, bureaucratic forms of organization in the economic and political systems.

He ran for president six times on the Socialist ticket.

Norman Thomas quotes ~
• “Dissent... is a right essential to any concept of the dignity and freedom of the individual; it is essential to the search for truth in a world wherein no authority is infallible.”
• “If you want a symbolic gesture, don't burn the flag; wash it.”
• “Rebellion per se is not a virtue. If it were, we would have some heroes on very low levels.”
• “I walk where I choose to walk.”
• “I always get more applause than votes.”

• Norman Thomas: The Great Dissenter

Dorothy Thompson
b. 7-9-1893; Lancaster, NY
d. 1961; Portugal

Dorothy Thompson was a journalist who focused her attention on Central Europe during the time Hitler was rising in power. The report and book resulting from her interview with Hitler was considered offensive by the Germans and she was expelled from Germany.

Thompson was considered on equal influence with Eleanor Roosevelt. She was also married to author Sinclair Lewis from 1928 to 1940/42.

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.”
• “The most destructive element in the human mind is fear. Fear creates aggressiveness.”
• "As far as I can see, I was really put out of Germany for the crime of blasphemy. My offense was to think that Hitler was just an ordinary man, after all. That is a crime in the reigning cult in Germany, which says Mr. Hitler is a Messiah sent by God to save the German people — an old Jewish idea. To question this mystic mission is so heinous that, if you are a German, you can be sent to jail. I, fortunately, am an American, so I was merely sent to Paris. Worse things can happen." (1934)

• World War II posters
• Historic Headlines posters
• American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson

Henry David Thoreau
b. 7-12-1817; Concord, MA
d. 5-6-1862, Concord, MA

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” Walden, Henry David Thoreau

• Henry David Thoreau posters
• more Writers Who Changed the World posters

Leo Tolstoy
b. 9-9-1828; Russia
d. 11-20-1910

Leo Tolstoy, best remembered as the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, was also an educational reformer, founding schools for the serfs on the family estate.

Tolstoy was also a “teacher” of Gandhi who called Tolstoy “the greatest apostle of non-violence that the present age has produced”.

Leo Tolstoy quotes ~
• “School is established, not in order that it should be convenient for the children to study, but that teachers should be able to teach in comfort. The children’s conversations, motion, merriment are not convenient for the teacher, and so in the schools, which are built on the plan of prisons, ... are prohibited.”
• “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
• “All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.”
• “A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.”
• “Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”

• Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy