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War itself is the enemy of the human race.

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
Enemy
Race
War
Human
Humans

More quotes by Howard Zinn

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Will Iraq be a democracy? The question is, 'Will America be a democracy?'
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What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but who is sitting in - and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.
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Richard Nixon was not the lesser evil, he was the greater evil, but in his administration the war was finally brought to an end, because he had to deal with the power of the anti-war movement as well as the power of the Vietnamese movement. I will vote, but always with a caution that voting is not crucial, and organizing is the important thing.
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Yes, we're dreamers. We want it all. We want a peaceful world. We want an egalitarian world. We don't want war. We don't want capitalism. We want a decent society.
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When you fight a war against a tyrant, who do you kill? You kill the victims of the tyrant.
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I wanted to be a part of history and not just a recorder and teacher of history. So that kind of attitude towards history, history itself as a political act, has always informed my writing and my teaching.
Howard Zinn
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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.
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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If there is going to be change, real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves. That's how change happens.
Howard Zinn
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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.
Howard Zinn
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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.
Howard Zinn
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I will try not to overlook the cruelties that victims inflict on one another as they are jammed together in the boxcars of the system. I don’t want to romanticize them. But I do remember (in rough paraphrase) a statement I once read: “The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don’t listen to it, you will never know what justice is.
Howard Zinn
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Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.
Howard Zinn
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I knew that a historian (or a journalist, or anyone telling a story) was forced to choose, out of an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian.
Howard Zinn
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With the indiscriminate nature of modern military technology (no such thing as a smart bomb, it turns out) all wars are wars against civilians, and are therefore inherently immoral. This is true even when a war is considered just, because it is fought against a tyrant, against an aggressor, to correct a stolen boundary.
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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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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David Ray Griffin has done admirable and painstaking research in reviewing the mysteries surrounding the 9/11 attacks. It is the most persuasive argument I have seen for further investigation [into] that historic and troubling event.
Howard Zinn
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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.
Howard Zinn
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Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.
Howard Zinn