Howard Zinn quotes - page 3

The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. (Howard Zinn)
To white Americans of the thirties, however, blacks North and South were invisible. Only th radicals made an attempt to break the racial barriers: Socialists, Trotskyists, Communists most of all. View quote
Howard Zinn
Behind the rebel battle yells and the legendary spirit of the Confederate army, there was much reluctance to fight. A sympathetic historian of the South, E. Merton Coulter, asked "Why did the Confederacy fail? The forces leading to the defeat were many but they may be summed up in this one fact"The People did not will hard enough and long enough to win."Not money or soldiers, but willpower and morale were decisive. View quote
Howard Zinn
That will happen... when all of us who are slightly privileged and slightly uneasy begin to see that we are like the guards in the prison uprising at Attica - expendable; that the Establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain its control, kill us. View quote
Howard Zinn
When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war. View quote
Howard Zinn
It is the great challenge of our time: How to achieve justice, with struggle, but without war. Ch. 5. View quote
Howard Zinn
It is His Majesty's heart's desire to see the swift termination of the war. View quote
Howard Zinn
We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. View quote
Howard Zinn
One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression. Patriotism becomes the order of the day, and those who question the war are seen as traitors, to be silenced and imprisoned. View quote
Howard Zinn
In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli. View quote
Howard Zinn
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. (Howard Zinn)
While some multimillionaires started in poverty, most did not. A study of the origins of 303 textile, railroad and steel executives of the 1870s showed that 90 percent came from middle- or upper-class families. The Horatio Alger stories of "rags to riches" were true for a few men, but mostly a myth, and a useful myth for control. View quote
Howard Zinn
The white population could not possibly be unaffected by those events - some whites more stubborn in their defense of segregation, but others beginning to think in different ways. And the black population was transformed, having risen up in mass action for the first time, feeling its power, knowing now that if the old order could be shaken it could be toppled. View quote
Howard Zinn
And the black population was transformed, having risen up in mass action for the first time, feeling its power, knowing now that if the old order could be shaken it could be toppled. View quote
Howard Zinn
To put it briefly: the evidence is quite overwhelming on this matter. The Japanese had sent an envoy (Ambassador Sato) to Moscow (still officially a neutral) to work out a negotiated surrender. View quote
Howard Zinn
These groups have resented one another and warred against one another with such vehemence and violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy country. View quote
Howard Zinn
I would encourage people to look around them in their community and find an organization that is doing something that they believe in, even if that organization has only five people, or ten people, or twenty people, or a hundred people. View quote
Howard Zinn
American society, although it has more freedom of expression than most societies in the world, thus sets limits beyond which respectable people are not supposed to think or speak. So far, too much of the debate on Vietnam has observed these limits. View quote
Howard Zinn
Why should we accept that the "talent" of someone who writes jingles for an advertising agency advertising dog food and gets $100,000 a year is superior to the talent of an auto mechanic who makes $40,000 a year? View quote
Howard Zinn
The white population could not possibly be unaffected by those events - some whites more stubborn in their defense of segregation, but others beginning to think in different ways. View quote
Howard Zinn
While some multimillionaires started in poverty, most did not. (Howard Zinn)
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. View quote
Howard Zinn
The Horatio Alger stories of "rags to riches" were true for a few men, but mostly a myth, and a useful myth for control. View quote
Howard Zinn
Anything they do, however small, becomes part of a much, much larger sort of flow of energy. And when enough people do enough things, however small they are, then change takes place. View quote
Howard Zinn
Scholars, who pride themselves on speaking their minds, often engage in a form of self-censorship which is called "realism." To be "realistic" in dealing with a problem is to work only among the alternatives which the most powerful in society put forth. View quote
Howard Zinn