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I don't think we can depend on Congress. In the American political system - we have been brought up to believe that the American political system works beautifully it is democratic Congress represents us the President is elected, he represents us - it doesn't work that way.

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
Work
Democratic
Believe
Depends
Way
Works
Beautifully
Think
System
Represents
Thinking
American
Elected
President
Depend
Doesn
Brought
Political
Congress

More quotes by Howard Zinn

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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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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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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.
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War in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.
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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.
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When we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress.
Howard Zinn
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In between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.
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Let's face a historical truth: we have never had a free market, we have always had government intervention in the economy, and indeed that intervention has been welcomed by the captains of finance and industry. They had no quarrel with big government when it served their needs.
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Democracy depends on people speaking out, and in times of great crisis, on people creating a commotion.
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When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war.
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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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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
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The future is an infinite succession of presents.
Howard Zinn
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War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.
Howard Zinn
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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
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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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The democratic principle, enunciated in the words of the Declaration of Independence, declared that government was secondary, that the people who established it were primary. Thus, the future of democracy depended on the people, and their growing consciousness of what was the decent way to relate to their fellow human beings all over the world.
Howard Zinn
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I have no regrets about my political activity, only that I sometimes got carried away with it and didn't find the right balance between obligations to my family and my need to be involved in social movements.
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.
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Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders . . . . and millions have been killed because of this obedience . . . .
Howard Zinn