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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
Even
Assuming
People
Secret
American
President
Democratically
Keep
Presidents
Stills
Elected
Still
Secrets
Right
Assume

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Again and again, Americans have voted for a president to keep them out of a war, only to see the peace candidate elected who then brings the nation into war.
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Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren.
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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.
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I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president — which means, in our time, a dangerous president — unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.
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I have come to believe that our lives can be turned in a different direction, our minds adopt a different way of thinking, by some significant, though small event. That belief can be frightening, or exhilarating, depending on whether you just contemplate it or do something with it.
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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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Music can be a distraction and an escape. Sometimes a welcome escape. You need it. But music can also serve a very important social function because music can do things that mere prose, mere ordinary political agitation can't do.
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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.
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But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is... to tell the truth.
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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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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.
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In a two-party system, if both parties ignore public opinion, there is no place voters can turn.
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Group meditation according to Jon Kabat
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Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.
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We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in Third World countries whose resources are coveted by multinational corporations. That hatred we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism....
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The future is an infinite succession of presents.
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When you fight a war against a tyrant, who do you kill? You kill the victims of the tyrant.
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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.
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One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.
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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.
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