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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
Degrees
Justified
Rule
Carefully
Possibility
Directly
Circumstances
Absolutes
Violence
Absolute
Evil
Degree
May
Defined
Great
Focused
Pacifist
More quotes by Howard Zinn
Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy it is absolutely essential to it.
Howard Zinn
The Roman Empire came to an end, but the Roman people didn't come to an end, so I see the American Empire coming to an end just as other empires have come to an end.
Howard Zinn
One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.
Howard Zinn
Use the Day of Atonement not to pray for the dead but to act for the living, to rescue those about to die.
Howard Zinn
We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.
Howard Zinn
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
How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?
Howard Zinn
War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.
Howard Zinn
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.
Howard Zinn
I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own.
Howard Zinn
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
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
War itself is the enemy of the human race.
Howard Zinn
I knew that a historian (or a journalist, or anyone telling a story) was forced to choose, out of an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian.
Howard Zinn
If you join a fight for social justice you may win or lose, but just by being part of the struggle, you win, and your life will be better for it.
Howard Zinn
History is important. If you don't know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.
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
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
When you fight a war against a tyrant, who do you kill? You kill the victims of the tyrant.
Howard Zinn
Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories, whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is.
Howard Zinn
