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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.
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
Effects
Writer
Living
Found
Intends
Doe
Literally
Writing
Effect
Beings
Meaning
More quotes by Howard Zinn
Democracy depends on people speaking out, and in times of great crisis, on people creating a commotion.
Howard Zinn
If what your country is doing seems to you practically and morally wrong, is dissent the highest form of patriotism?
Howard Zinn
That whole idea of threats to national security is a very interesting one. The phrase is very useful for the government to try to encompass the citizenry in the same box as the government is in. To say, We're all in this together. It threatens all of us.
Howard Zinn
One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.
Howard Zinn
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
Even if you assume presidents were democratically elected they still have no right to keep secrets from the American people.
Howard Zinn
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.
Howard Zinn
The fact that war belongs to the past, does not mean it has to be part of the future.
Howard Zinn
History is important. If you don't know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.
Howard Zinn
Sometimes it's a short step from banning to burning.
Howard Zinn
There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States.
Howard Zinn
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
What is called “apathy” is, I believe, a feeling of helplessness on the part of the ordinary citizen, a feeling of impotence in the face of enormous power. It’s not that people are apathetic they do care about what is going on, but don’t know what to do about it, so they do nothing, and appear to be indifferent.
Howard Zinn
Crosses and gallows - that deadly historic juxtaposition.
Howard Zinn
One of the problems with dealing with anarchism is that there are many people whose ideas are anarchist, but who do not necessarily call themselves anarchists.
Howard Zinn
Use the Day of Atonement not to pray for the dead but to act for the living, to rescue those about to die.
Howard Zinn
In between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.
Howard Zinn
[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
Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.
Howard Zinn
The mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction-so tremblingly respectful of states and statesmen and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people's movements-that we need some counterforce to avoid being crushed into submission.
Howard Zinn
