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

Howard Zinn

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Howard Zinn
Age: 87 †
Born: 1922
Born: August 24
Died: 2010
Died: January 27
Film Director
Historian
Historian Of The Modern Age
Human Rights Activist
Journalist
Labor Historian
Pacifist
Peace Activist
Playwright
Brooklyn
New York
Slavery
Terrible
Worst
Resulted
Results
Historically
Peace
Disobedience
War
Genocide
History
Things
Obedience

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I am not an absolute pacifist, because I can't rule out the possibility that under some, carefully defined circumstances, some degree of violence may be justified, if it is focused directly at a great evil.
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Use the Day of Atonement not to pray for the dead but to act for the living, to rescue those about to die.
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There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
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We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in Third World countries whose resources are coveted by multinational corporations. That hatred we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism....
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Group meditation according to Jon Kabat
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There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States.
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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.
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That whole idea of threats to national security is a very interesting one. The phrase is very useful for the government to try to encompass the citizenry in the same box as the government is in. To say, We're all in this together. It threatens all of us.
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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.
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In a two-party system, if both parties ignore public opinion, there is no place voters can turn.
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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.
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If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates.
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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.
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Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren.
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I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president — which means, in our time, a dangerous president — unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.
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Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories, whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is.
Howard Zinn
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I am an anarchist, and according to anarchist principles nation states become obstacles to a true humanistic globalization.
Howard Zinn
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In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims.
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Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders . . . . and millions have been killed because of this obedience . . . .
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I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own.
Howard Zinn