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Democracy depends on people speaking out, and in times of great crisis, on people creating a commotion.

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
Creating
Depends
Democracy
Times
Great
People
Commotion
Speaking
Crisis

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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.
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Group meditation according to Jon Kabat
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There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States.
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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.
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Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
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I wanted to be a part of history and not just a recorder and teacher of history. So that kind of attitude towards history, history itself as a political act, has always informed my writing and my teaching.
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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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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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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 . . . .
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[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.
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Use the Day of Atonement not to pray for the dead but to act for the living, to rescue those about to die.
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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.
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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.
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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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How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?
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I was a bombadier in WW 2. When you are up 30,000 feet you do not hear the screams or smell the blood or see those without limbs or eyes. It was not til I read Hersey's Hiroshima that I realized what bomber pilots do.
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The chief problem in historical honesty is not outright lying. It is omission or de-emphasis of important data. The definition of 'important', of course, depends on one's values.
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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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They were not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, they were absent in the Constitution and they were invisible in the new political democracy. They were the women of early America.
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Right is not only to act within the law. It's to also act according to the conscience.
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