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[W]e're taught that if one person kills another person, that is murder but if a government kills a hundred thousand persons, that is patriotism.
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
Taught
Another
Government
Persons
Kills
Person
Patriotism
Murder
Hundred
More quotes by Howard Zinn
Every word you utter to another human being has an effect, but you don't know it. If people begin to understand that change comes about as a result of a million tiny acts that seem totally insignificant, well then, they wouldn't hesitate to take those tiny acts.
Howard Zinn
Education can, and should be, dangerous.
Howard Zinn
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
The only hope lies in the fact that the American people - like people everywhere - are basically decent people with common sense.
Howard Zinn
War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.
Howard Zinn
Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy it is absolutely essential to it. It is a corrective to the sluggishness of the proper channels, a way of breaking through passages blocked by tradition and prejudice. It is disruptive and troublesome, but it is a necessary disruption, a healthy troublesome.
Howard Zinn
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
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
If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates.
Howard Zinn
In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.
Howard Zinn
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
If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, not as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country, one's fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles.
Howard Zinn
Terrorism and war have something in common. They both involve the killing of innocent people to achieve what the killers believe is a good end.
Howard Zinn
When a nation issues ultimatums, it leaves no room for compromise and ensures that war will continue.
Howard Zinn
In a two-party system, if both parties ignore public opinion, there is no place voters can turn.
Howard Zinn
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
It's not right to respond to terrorism by terrorizing other people. And furthermore, it's not going to help. Then you might say, Yes, it's terrorizing people, but it's worth doing because it will end terrorism. But how much common sense does it take to know that you cannot end terrorism by indiscriminately dropping bombs?
Howard Zinn
One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.
Howard Zinn
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.
Howard Zinn
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.
Howard Zinn