Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Tell
Absence
Trying
Proof
People
Potential
Group
National
Groups
Movement
Alone
Disheartened
More quotes by 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
Right is not only to act within the law. It's to also act according to the conscience.
Howard Zinn
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....
Howard Zinn
Sometimes it's a short step from banning to burning.
Howard Zinn
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.
Howard Zinn
If what your country is doing seems to you practically and morally wrong, is dissent the highest form of patriotism?
Howard Zinn
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
But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is... to tell the truth.
Howard Zinn
The United States builds weapons presumably secretly, and then it sells them to other countries. So the whole business of secrecy is kind of a fake issue because hardly anything technological remains a secret for very long.
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
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
Will Iraq be a democracy? The question is, 'Will America be a democracy?'
Howard Zinn
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.
Howard Zinn
Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.
Howard Zinn
I had always insisted that a good education was a synthesis of book learning and involvement in social action, that each enriched the other. I wanted my students to know that the accumulation of knowledge, while fascinating in itself, is not sufficient as long as so many people in the world have no opportunity to experience that fascination.
Howard Zinn
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.
Howard Zinn
[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
How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?
Howard Zinn
I believe that it is preferable sometimes to have one candidate rather another candidate, while you understand that that is not the solution. Sometimes the lesser evil is not so lesser, so you want to ignore that, and you either do not vote or vote for third party as a protest against the party system.
Howard Zinn
When you fight a war against a tyrant, who do you kill? You kill the victims of the tyrant.
Howard Zinn
