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Right is not only to act within the law. It's to also act according to the conscience.

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
Also
Right
According
Conscience
Law
Within

More quotes by Howard Zinn

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While some multimillionaires started in poverty, most did not. A study of the origins of 303 textile, railroad and steel executives of the 1870s showed that 90 percent came from middle- or upper-class families. The Horatio Alger stories of rags to riches were true for a few men, but mostly a myth, and a useful myth for control.
Howard Zinn
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Before God and high heaven, is there a law for one man which is not a law for every other man?
Howard Zinn
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There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
Howard Zinn
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The violence of our time is caused by obedience.
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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There was something horrifying in the realization that, in this twenty-first century of what we call 'civilization,' we have carved up what we claim is one world into 200 artificially created entities we call 'nations' and armed to apprehend or kill anyone who crosses a boundary.
Howard Zinn
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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.
Howard Zinn
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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.
Howard Zinn
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But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is... to tell the truth.
Howard Zinn
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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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[Nationalism is] a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands.
Howard Zinn
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History is important. If you don't know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.
Howard Zinn
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You can't be neutral on a moving train.
Howard Zinn
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If there is going to be change, real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves. That's how change happens.
Howard Zinn
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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.
Howard Zinn
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They didn't give their lives for their country! their lives were taken from them by their government.
Howard Zinn
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To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
Howard Zinn
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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.
Howard Zinn
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War in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.
Howard Zinn
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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.
Howard Zinn