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The violence of our time is caused by obedience.

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
Obedience
Violence
Time
Caused

More quotes by Howard Zinn

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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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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.
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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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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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The future is an infinite succession of presents.
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David Ray Griffin has done admirable and painstaking research in reviewing the mysteries surrounding the 9/11 attacks. It is the most persuasive argument I have seen for further investigation [into] that historic and troubling event.
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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.
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They didn't give their lives for their country! their lives were taken from them by their government.
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Is not nationalism - that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder - one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking - cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on - have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.
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There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
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The only hope lies in the fact that the American people - like people everywhere - are basically decent people with common sense.
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Sometimes it's a short step from banning to burning.
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Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
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One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.
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If what your country is doing seems to you practically and morally wrong, is dissent the highest form of patriotism?
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