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When a nation issues ultimatums, it leaves no room for compromise and ensures that war will continue.

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
Compromise
Leaves
Continue
Nation
Room
Rooms
Issues
Ultimatums
Nations
Ensures

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Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.
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Where progress has been made, wherever any kind of injustice has been overturned, it’s been because people acted as citizens, and not as politicians. They didn’t just moan. They worked, they acted, they organized, they rioted if necessary to bring their situation to the attention of people in power. And that’s what we have to do today.
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George Orwell said, Whoever controls the past controls the future, by which he meant that history is incredibly important in shaping the world view of the next generation of people.
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Group meditation according to Jon Kabat
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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.
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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.
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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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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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If what your country is doing seems to you practically and morally wrong, is dissent the highest form of patriotism?
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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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Democracy depends on people speaking out, and in times of great crisis, on people creating a commotion.
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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.
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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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Crosses and gallows - that deadly historic juxtaposition.
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How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?
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People should go where they are not supposed to go, say what they are not supposed to say, and stay when they are told to leave.
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There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States.
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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.
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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.
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