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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.

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
Power
Murder
Nationalism
Indoctrinated
Great
Hatred
Flag
Engenders
Childhood
Flags
Nurtured
Way
Mass
Fierce
Boundary
Time
Along
Devotion
Anthem
Thinking
Ways
Boundaries
Cultivated
Religious
Racism
Deadly
Evil
Useful
Evils

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The Roman Empire came to an end, but the Roman people didn't come to an end, so I see the American Empire coming to an end just as other empires have come to an end.
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War itself is the enemy of the human race.
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War in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.
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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.
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One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.
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I have no regrets about my political activity, only that I sometimes got carried away with it and didn't find the right balance between obligations to my family and my need to be involved in social movements.
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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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Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy it is absolutely essential to it. It is a corrective to the sluggishness of the proper channels, a way of breaking through passages blocked by tradition and prejudice. It is disruptive and troublesome, but it is a necessary disruption, a healthy troublesome.
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When a nation issues ultimatums, it leaves no room for compromise and ensures that war will continue.
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The meaning ... of a writer will be found not just in what he intends to say, or what he does literally say, but in the effect of his writing on living beings.
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It's not right to respond to terrorism by terrorizing other people. And furthermore, it's not going to help. Then you might say, Yes, it's terrorizing people, but it's worth doing because it will end terrorism. But how much common sense does it take to know that you cannot end terrorism by indiscriminately dropping bombs?
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Again and again, Americans have voted for a president to keep them out of a war, only to see the peace candidate elected who then brings the nation into war.
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Will Iraq be a democracy? The question is, 'Will America be a democracy?'
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The future is an infinite succession of presents.
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Let's face a historical truth: we have never had a free market, we have always had government intervention in the economy, and indeed that intervention has been welcomed by the captains of finance and industry. They had no quarrel with big government when it served their needs.
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The democratic principle, enunciated in the words of the Declaration of Independence, declared that government was secondary, that the people who established it were primary. Thus, the future of democracy depended on the people, and their growing consciousness of what was the decent way to relate to their fellow human beings all over the world.
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The fact that war belongs to the past, does not mean it has to be part of the future.
Howard Zinn