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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.

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
People
Supposed
Stay
Leave
Told

More quotes by Howard Zinn

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I try to tell each group that it is not alone, and that the very people who are disheartened by the absence of a national movement are themselves proof of the potential for such a movement.
Howard Zinn
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Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
Howard Zinn
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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.
Howard Zinn
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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.
Howard Zinn
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Imperialism is the factor in American policy, not just since 1898, but in fact long before it when we were expanding across this continent and taking away Indian lands in order to enlarge the territory of the United States. We have been an imperial power and an expansionist power for a very long time.
Howard Zinn
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Behind the deceptive words designed to entice people into supporting violence -- words like democracy, freedom, self-defense, national security -- there is the reality of enormous wealth in the hands of a few, while billions of people in the world are hungry, sick, homeless.
Howard Zinn
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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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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.
Howard Zinn
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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.
Howard Zinn
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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.
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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People of the United States have to really consider whether they want to be an empire. Sweden is not worried about terrorism. New Zealand is not worried about terrorism. Holland is not worried about terrorism. Why not be a modest little country without all of these enormous ambitions?
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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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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War in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.
Howard Zinn
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Even if you assume presidents were democratically elected they still have no right to keep secrets from the American people.
Howard Zinn
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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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They were not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, they were absent in the Constitution and they were invisible in the new political democracy. They were the women of early America.
Howard Zinn
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I am not an absolute pacifist, because I can't rule out the possibility that under some, carefully defined circumstances, some degree of violence may be justified, if it is focused directly at a great evil.
Howard Zinn
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But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation.
Howard Zinn