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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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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
Great
Focused
Pacifist
Degrees
Justified
Rule
Carefully
Possibility
Directly
Circumstances
Absolutes
Violence
Absolute
Evil
Degree
May
Defined

More quotes by Howard Zinn

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One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.
Howard Zinn
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But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is... to tell the truth.
Howard Zinn
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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.
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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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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In between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.
Howard Zinn
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Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.
Howard Zinn
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Right is not only to act within the law. It's to also act according to the conscience.
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.
Howard Zinn
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Is not nationalism - that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder - one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking - cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on - have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.
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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If racism can't be shown to be natural then it is the result of certain conditions, and we are impelled to eliminate those conditions.
Howard Zinn
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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.
Howard Zinn
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With the indiscriminate nature of modern military technology (no such thing as a smart bomb, it turns out) all wars are wars against civilians, and are therefore inherently immoral. This is true even when a war is considered just, because it is fought against a tyrant, against an aggressor, to correct a stolen boundary.
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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Crosses and gallows - that deadly historic juxtaposition.
Howard Zinn
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The violence of our time is caused by obedience.
Howard Zinn
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Richard Nixon was not the lesser evil, he was the greater evil, but in his administration the war was finally brought to an end, because he had to deal with the power of the anti-war movement as well as the power of the Vietnamese movement. I will vote, but always with a caution that voting is not crucial, and organizing is the important thing.
Howard Zinn
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Civil disobedience is not something outside the realm of democracy. Democracy requires civil disobedience. Without civil disobedience democracy does not exist.
Howard Zinn
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Sometimes it's a short step from banning to burning.
Howard Zinn