Quote

I was a bombadier in WW 2. When you are up 30,000 feet you do not hear the screams or smell the blood or see those without limbs or eyes. It was not til I read Hersey's Hiroshima that I realized what bomber pilots do.

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
Eye
Pilots
Read
Scream
War
Smell
Bomber
Without
Realized
Screams
Feet
Bombers
Blood
Hiroshima
Hear
Antiwar
Eyes
Limbs

More quotes by Howard Zinn

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Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy it is absolutely essential to it.
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Even if you assume presidents were democratically elected they still have no right to keep secrets from the American people.
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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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If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates.
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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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I have come to believe that our lives can be turned in a different direction, our minds adopt a different way of thinking, by some significant, though small event. That belief can be frightening, or exhilarating, depending on whether you just contemplate it or do something with it.
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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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I do take the threat of terrorism seriously. You cannot eliminate that threat or diminish that threat by bombing a country.
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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.
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Tyranny is Tyranny, let it come from whom it may.
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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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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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One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.
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The future is an infinite succession of presents.
Howard Zinn
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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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I had always insisted that a good education was a synthesis of book learning and involvement in social action, that each enriched the other. I wanted my students to know that the accumulation of knowledge, while fascinating in itself, is not sufficient as long as so many people in the world have no opportunity to experience that fascination.
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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.
Howard Zinn
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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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Before God and high heaven, is there a law for one man which is not a law for every other man?
Howard Zinn
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How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?
Howard Zinn