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You can't be neutral on a moving train.

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
Passivity
Neutrality
Neutral
Train
Justice
Moving
History

More quotes by Howard Zinn

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When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won.
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Music can be a distraction and an escape. Sometimes a welcome escape. You need it. But music can also serve a very important social function because music can do things that mere prose, mere ordinary political agitation can't do.
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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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[Nationalism is] a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands.
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Charles Beard warned us that governments-inc luding the government of the United States-are not neutral, that they represent the dominant economic interests, and that their Constitutions are intended to serve these interests.
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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.
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I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.
Howard Zinn
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We better rethink the position of the United States in the world and whether we want to be an empire. Being an empire puts all of us in jeopardy. The American Empire, while it was just wreaking havoc on other nations, didn't bother us.
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People of the United States have to really consider whether they want to be an empire. Sweden is not worried about terrorism. New Zealand is not worried about terrorism. Holland is not worried about terrorism. Why not be a modest little country without all of these enormous ambitions?
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Is not nationalism - that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder - one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking - cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on - have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.
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I don't think we can depend on Congress. In the American political system - we have been brought up to believe that the American political system works beautifully it is democratic Congress represents us the President is elected, he represents us - it doesn't work that way.
Howard Zinn
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The violence of our time is caused by obedience.
Howard Zinn
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When you fight a war against a tyrant, who do you kill? You kill the victims of the tyrant.
Howard Zinn
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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.
Howard Zinn
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The only way things will happen is if people get over the notion that they must see immediate success. If they get over that notion and persist, then they will see things happen before they even realize it.
Howard Zinn
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Are terrorists going to be deterred - are terrorists going to be scared if we react violently? No. They love it. That's what they dote on. They dote on violence. They dote on having more reasons to commit more terrorism.
Howard Zinn
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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.
Howard Zinn
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The future is an infinite succession of presents.
Howard Zinn
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But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope.
Howard Zinn
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If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates.
Howard Zinn