Howard Zinn quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Howard Zinn on Wise Famous Quotes.

War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.

Diverse audiences can be just as misled as homogenous audiences.

Since war itself is the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on terrorism is profoundly self-contradictory.

The resources of a university, of a college, should not be wasted in merely academic pursuits.

It was borrowed time anyway - the whole upper tenth of a nation living with the insouciance of a grand duc and the casualness of chorus girls.

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

Crosses and gallows - that deadly historic juxtaposition.

Party politics and religion now substituting for class conflict.

Catholic Church, expelled all the Jews,

There is an underside to every age about which history does not often speak, because history is written from records left by the privileged.

was allowed to merge with Hartford. It was all settled out of court,

Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.

More than half the colonists who came to the North American shores in the colonial period came as servants.

To hell with your courts, I know what justice is.

[T]hat combination of inferior status and derogatory thought [is what] we call racism.

Why do we have to be a military superpower? Why can't we be a humanitarian superpower?

It was an old lesson learned by governments: that war solves problems of control.

Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.

grievances of the lowest classes mingled with

The problem in this world is not civil disobedience ... th e problem in this world is civil obedience.

If what your country is doing seems to you practically and morally wrong, is dissent the highest form of patriotism?

Free white workers were better off than slaves or servants, but they still resented unfair treatment by the wealthier classes.

If you want to end terrorism, you have to stop being terrorists

In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.

If racism can't be shown to be natural then it is the result of certain conditions, and we are impelled to eliminate those conditions.

I do take the threat of terrorism seriously. You cannot eliminate that threat or diminish that threat by bombing a country.

(Jefferson's personal distaste for slavery must be put alongside the fact that he owned hundreds of slaves to the day he died).

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.

He estimates that perhaps 250,000 slaves were imported illegally before the Civil War.

Capital punishment could not be justified in any society calling itself civilized.

Group meditation according to Jon Kabat

So long as atrocities remain remote, abstract, they will be tolerated, even by decent people.

War itself is the enemy of the human race.

Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.

Politics is pointless if it does nothing to enhance the beauty of our lives.

Education can, and should be, dangerous.

When you fight a war against a tyrant, who do you kill? You kill the victims of the tyrant.

The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States.

If you don't know history, it is as if you were born yesterday.

strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought

When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war.

They have the guns, we have the poets. Therefore, we will win.

The only hope lies in the fact that the American people - like people everywhere - are basically decent people with common sense.

In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.

There is civil disobedience against the military machine, protest against police brutality directed especially at people of color.

You can't be neutral on a moving train.

Before God and high heaven, is there a law for one man which is not a law for every other man?

Racism was becoming more and more practical.

Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can change the world.

Then Gregory lowered his voice, suddenly serious. "But it looks like we got to do it the hard way, and stay down here, and educate them.

One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.

I didn't want to spent a lot of close time with someone who believed that fun is a bourgeois indulgence.

What we have is a more sophisticated form of imperialism, which is economic. But lurking in the background, always ready to go, is an armed force.

But slave importation became illegal in 1808.

Even if you assume presidents were democratically elected they still have no right to keep secrets from the American people.

the media, like the politicians, do not take note of rebellion until it is too large to be ignored.

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil ...

When a nation issues ultimatums, it leaves no room for compromise and ensures that war will continue.

We must transfer our anger to the brutalities of our time.

If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates.

Use the Day of Atonement not to pray for the dead but to act for the living, to rescue those about to die.

New York blacks could not vote unless they owned $250 in property (a qualification not applied to whites).

Only one fear was greater than the fear of black rebellion in the new American colonies.

The establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain it's control, kill us

How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?

Sometimes it's a short step from banning to burning.

The cry of the poor is is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is.

[W]e're taught that if one person kills another person, that is murder; but if a government kills a hundred thousand persons, that is patriotism.

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.

When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won.

Ruling elites seem to have learned through the generations - consciously or not - that war makes them more secure against internal trouble.

They didn't give their lives for their country! their lives were taken from them by their government.

Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.

War is terrorism ... Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause. That's what terrorists are about.

Terrorism and war have something in common. They both involve the killing of innocent people to achieve what the killers believe is a good end.

Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.

Tyranny is Tyranny, let it come from whom it may.

Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.

When in all the nations of the world the rule of law is the darling of the leaders and the plague of the people, we ought to begin to recognize this.

Education becomes most rich and alive when it confronts the reality of moral conflict in the world.

When we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress.

In a two-party system, if both parties ignore public opinion, there is no place voters can turn.

What motivates me is the desire to bring up a whole new generation of active citizens who believe in peace and social justice and will work for it.

If you join a fight for social justice you may win or lose, but just by being part of the struggle, you win, and your life will be better for it.

I am an anarchist, and according to anarchist principles nation states become obstacles to a true humanistic globalization.

Being fired has some of the advantages of dying without its supreme disadvantages. People say extra-nice things about you, and you get to hear them.

But remember, this power of the people on top depends on the obedience of the people below. When people stop obeying, they have no power.

People should go where they are not supposed to go, say what they are not supposed to say, and stay when they are told to leave.

Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.

The fact that war belongs to the past, does not mean it has to be part of the future.

I always emphasize the historic role of people of color in organizing and protesting to achieve justice.

Most wars, after all, present themselves as humanitarian endeavors to help people.

In war, good guys always become bad guys.

If there is going to be change, real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves. That's how change happens.

But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is ... to tell the truth.

Our ethos is all that we currently hold to be true. It is what we act upon. It governs our manners, our business, and our politics.

Will Iraq be a democracy? The question is, 'Will America be a democracy?'

The future is an infinite succession of presents

will not hold ourselves bound to obey the laws in which we have no voice of representation.