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It's a strange thing, we think that law brings order. Law doesn't. How do we know that law does not bring order? Look around us. We live under the rule of law. Notice how much order we have?

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
Think
Order
Thinking
Around
Notice
Doe
Brings
Live
Rule
Look
Strange
Looks
Bring
Thing
Law
Much
Doesn

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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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Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.
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The only way things will happen is if people get over the notion that they must see immediate success. If they get over that notion and persist, then they will see things happen before they even realize it.
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The only hope lies in the fact that the American people - like people everywhere - are basically decent people with common sense.
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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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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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I don't think we can depend on Congress. In the American political system - we have been brought up to believe that the American political system works beautifully it is democratic Congress represents us the President is elected, he represents us - it doesn't work that way.
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The fact that war belongs to the past, does not mean it has to be part of the future.
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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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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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You can't be neutral on a moving train.
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And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.
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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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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.
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War in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.
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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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Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.
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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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If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates.
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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.
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