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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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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
President
Democratically
Keep
Presidents
Stills
Elected
Still
Secrets
Right
Assume
Even
Assuming
People
Secret
American
More quotes by 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
While some multimillionaires started in poverty, most did not. A study of the origins of 303 textile, railroad and steel executives of the 1870s showed that 90 percent came from middle- or upper-class families. The Horatio Alger stories of rags to riches were true for a few men, but mostly a myth, and a useful myth for control.
Howard Zinn
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
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
The fact that war belongs to the past, does not mean it has to be part of the future.
Howard Zinn
People who have no respect for human life or for freedom or justice have taken over this beautiful country of ours. It will be up to the American people to take it back.
Howard Zinn
One of the problems with dealing with anarchism is that there are many people whose ideas are anarchist, but who do not necessarily call themselves anarchists.
Howard Zinn
One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression. Patriotism becomes the order of the day, and those who question the war are seen as traitors, to be silenced and imprisoned.
Howard Zinn
But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope.
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
When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war.
Howard Zinn
I do take the threat of terrorism seriously. You cannot eliminate that threat or diminish that threat by bombing a country.
Howard Zinn
How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?
Howard Zinn
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.
Howard Zinn
But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is... to tell the truth.
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
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
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
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 only way things will happen is if people get over the notion that they must see immediate success. If they get over that notion and persist, then they will see things happen before they even realize it.
Howard Zinn