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In between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.

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
Thousand
War
Passivity
Possibilities
Possibility

More quotes by Howard Zinn

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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.
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War itself is the enemy of the human race.
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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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What we have is a more sophisticated form of imperialism, which is economic. But lurking in the background, always ready to go, is an armed force.
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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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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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The future is an infinite succession of presents.
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Yes, we're dreamers. We want it all. We want a peaceful world. We want an egalitarian world. We don't want war. We don't want capitalism. We want a decent society.
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Charles Beard warned us that governments-inc luding the government of the United States-are not neutral, that they represent the dominant economic interests, and that their Constitutions are intended to serve these interests.
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Throughout American history, the political leaders have always exhorted the American people to be nice and quiet and leave things to them. But when very serious evils confronted the American people, they had to go beyond the Congressmen and Senators, and they had to commit civil disobedience and they had even to break the law.
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[...] There is none that disperses its control more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media - none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty.
Howard Zinn
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I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.
Howard Zinn
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Perhaps the most important thing I learned was about democracy, that democracy is not our government, our constitution, our legal structure. Too often they are enemies of democracy.
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What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but who is sitting in - and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.
Howard Zinn
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Sometimes it's a short step from banning to burning.
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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Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.
Howard Zinn
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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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Right is not only to act within the law. It's to also act according to the conscience.
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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.
Howard Zinn