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The term 'just war' is an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny and oppression without killing huge numbers of people.

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
War
Challenge
Inherently
Without
Deal
Internals
Great
Deals
Unjust
Time
Huge
Internal
People
Numbers
Contradiction
Challenges
Oppression
Term
Tyranny
Evil
Killing

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Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy it is absolutely essential to it.
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Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
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They didn't give their lives for their country! their lives were taken from them by their government.
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There is a hard core of people in the United States who will not be moved, whatever facts you present, from their conviction that this nation means only to do good, and almost always does good, in the world, that it is the beacon of liberty and freedom.
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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 violence of our time is caused by obedience.
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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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Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely the path that is your life. - Jon Kabat
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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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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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One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression. Patriotism becomes the order of the day, and those who question the war are seen as traitors, to be silenced and imprisoned.
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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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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.
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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.
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One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.
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Diverse audiences can be just as misled as homogenous audiences.
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The chief problem in historical honesty is not outright lying. It is omission or de-emphasis of important data. The definition of 'important', of course, depends on one's values.
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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.
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There was something horrifying in the realization that, in this twenty-first century of what we call 'civilization,' we have carved up what we claim is one world into 200 artificially created entities we call 'nations' and armed to apprehend or kill anyone who crosses a boundary.
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