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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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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
History
Political
Recorder
Part
Recorders
Wanted
Informed
Writing
Towards
Kind
Teaching
Always
Teacher
Attitude

More quotes by Howard Zinn

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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.
Howard Zinn
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People who have no respect for human life or for freedom or justice have taken over this beautiful country of ours. It will be up to the American people to take it back.
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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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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....
Howard Zinn
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These people—the employed, the somewhat privileged—are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls.
Howard Zinn
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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
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Diverse audiences can be just as misled as homogenous audiences.
Howard Zinn
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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.
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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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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When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war.
Howard Zinn
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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.
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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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.
Howard Zinn
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There was an idea in the air, becoming clearer and stronger, an idea not just in the theories of Karl Marx but in the dreams of writers and artists through the ages: that people might cooperatively use the treasures of the earth to make life better for everyone, not just a few.
Howard Zinn
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If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates.
Howard Zinn
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They didn't give their lives for their country! their lives were taken from them by their government.
Howard Zinn
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Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.
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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War in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.
Howard Zinn