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You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

Book by Howard Zinn · 24 quotes · People, World, Compassion

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You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times Quotes

“Behind the deceptive words designed to entice people into supporting violence -- words like democracy, freedom, self-defense, national security -- there is the reality of enormous wealth in the hands of a few, while billions of people in the world are hungry, sick, homeless.”

PeopleWorldSelfHandsRealityWealthBehindsDemocracyViolenceSecuritySickDefenseBillionsHungryEnormousHomelessNational SecuritySelf DefenseDeceptiveDemocracy Freedom
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“We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

PeopleWorldLifeInspirationalActionPeaceProcessChangeMillionsTransformationChanging The WorldHeroicHeroismParticipationEngagingMaking ChangesSmall ActsProcess Of ChangeSmall VictoriesSmall WinsHeroic Acts
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“The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Those special people who speak out in such a way as to shake up not only the self-assurance of their enemies, but the complacency of their friends, are precious catalysts for change.”

PeopleWayIdeasSelfSpeakOpinionEnemySpecialShakesDominantAssuranceComplacencyDefianceCatalystSpeaks OutSelf AssuranceSpecial PeopleCatalyst For Change
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“There is a power that can be created out of pent-up indignation, courage, and the inspiration of a common cause, and that if enough people put their minds and bodies into that cause, they can win. It is a phenomenon recorded again and against in the history of popular movements against injustice all over the world.”

PeopleIfsWorldMindEnoughBodyInspirationWinningCausesCommonMovementInjusticePhenomenonMind And BodyIndignation
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“That chain of relationships made me think of how connections are made--you read a book, you meet a person, you have a single experience, and your life is changed in some way. No act, therefore, however small, should be dismissed or ignored.”

ThinkingWayShouldPersonsMadeBookLife IsChangedConnectionsChainsIgnored
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“But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope.”

HumansSometimesLyingHuman BeingsPowerfulPossibilityMachinesPressureIndependenceMovedHistoricalInjusticeDareConformityConform
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“The courtroom is one instance of the fact that while our society may be liberal and democratic in some large and vague sense, its moving parts, its smaller chambers--its classrooms, its workplaces, its corporate boardrooms, its jails, its military barracks--are flagrantly undemocratic, dominated by one commanding person or a tiny elite of power.”

MayPersonsFactsMovingMilitaryDemocraticTinyInstanceCorporateOur SocietyJailClassroomElitesVagueWorkplaceChamberCourtroomMoving Parts
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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.”

PeopleKnowsWorldLongBookActionWantedOpportunitySocialStudentsSufficientFascinatingFascinationInvolvementAccumulationSynthesisGood EducationSocial ActionBook Learning
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“The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

ThinkingShouldHumansHopeHuman BeingsCompassionVictoryFutureInfiniteOur FutureMarvelousHuman HistoryMy FutureSuccessionDefianceHope For The FutureHopeful Future
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“I have come to believe that our lives can be turned in a different direction, our minds adopt a different way of thinking, by some significant, though small event. That belief can be frightening, or exhilarating, depending on whether you just contemplate it or do something with it.”

ThinkingWayMindBelieveDifferentBeliefJusticeOur LivesEventsDiversitySocial JusticeSignificantDifferent WaysContemplatingFrighteningWay Of ThinkingExhilaratingDifferent DirectionsSmall Events
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“I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.”

JusticePovertyRacismPrisonGreedPunishmentJailUnemploymentDesperationHomelessnessRetributionImprisonmentIncarcerationCriminal Justice SystemCrimesCycle Of Violence
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“I've always resented the smug statements of politicians, media commentators, corporate executives who talked of how, in America, if you worked hard you would become rich. The meaning of that was if you were poor it was because you hadn't worked hard enough. I knew this was a lie, about my father and millions of others, men and women who worked harder than anyone, harder than financiers and politicians, harder than anybody if you accept that when you work at an unpleasant job that makes it very hard work indeed.”

Hard WorkLiesAmerican DreamVictim BlamingFalsity Of The American DreamIndignation Of The Poor
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“The willingness to undertake such action cannot be based on certainties, but on those possibilities glimpsed in a reading of history different from the customary painful recounting of human cruelties. In such a reading we can find not only war but resistance to war, not only injustice but rebellion against injustice, not only selfishness but self-sacrifice, not only silence in the fact of tyranny but defiance, not only callousness but compassion. Human beings show a broad spectrum of qualities, but it is the worst of these that are usually emphasized, and the result, too often, is to dishearten us, diminish our spirit. And yet, historically, that spirit refuses to surrender.”

SpiritHopeCompassionHistoryInjusticeOptimisim
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“Civil disobedience, as I put it to the audience, was not the problem, despite the warnings of some that it threatened social stability, that it led to anarchy. The greatest danger, I argued, was civil obedience, the submission of individual conscience to governmental authority. Such obedience led to the horrors we saw in totalitarian states, and in liberal states it led to the public's acceptance of war whenever the so-called democratic government decided on it... In such a world, the rule of law maintains things as they are. Therefore, to begin the process of change, to stop a war, to establish justice, it may be necessary to break the law, to commit acts of civil disobedience, as Southern black did, as antiwar protesters did.”

JusticeOppressionRule Of LawCivil DisobedienceAcquiescenceDangers Of Obedience
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“A jury is always a more orthodox body than any defendant brought before it; for blacks it is usually a whiter group, for poor people, a more prosperous group... Another lesson about the justice system: the way the judge charges the jury inevitably pushes them one way or the other, limits their independent judgment.”

JuryOrthodoxyCriminal Justice SystemImpartialityJudicial PowerJury Instructions
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“I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy... But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head... The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you. From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country--not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society--cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian.”

DemocracyConstitutionPoliceInjusticeUsaFree SpeechFirst AmendmentAuthoritarianismBill Of RightsAmerican SocietyEgalitarianismRadical PoliticsFailed LiberalismPower Interests
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