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Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn Quotes

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Famous Howard Zinn Quotes

“[...] There is none that disperses its control more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media - none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty.”

PeopleSchoolAmericaChurchSituationSuccessfulMediaCreatingMassLoyaltyReformOppositionVotingPatrioticMass Media
Book:A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present
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“If we have learned anything in the past ten years, it is that these lovely things about America were never lovely. We have been expansionist and aggressive and mean to other people from the beginning. And we've been aggressive and mean to people in this country, and we've allocated the wealth of this country in a very unjust way. We've never had justice in our courts for the poor people, for black people, for radicals. Now how can we boast that America is a very special place? It's not that special. It really isn't.”

PeopleIfsWayYearsMeanHas BeensCountryAmericaPastBlackWealthJusticePoorSpecialTenCourtLovelyRadicalAggressiveBlack PeopleUnjustPoor PeopleBoastSpecial PlacesLovely Things
Author:Howard Zinn
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“What is called “apathy” is, I believe, a feeling of helplessness on the part of the ordinary citizen, a feeling of impotence in the face of enormous power. It’s not that people are apathetic; they do care about what is going on, but don’t know what to do about it, so they do nothing, and appear to be indifferent.”

PeopleKnowsBelieveFeelingsCareFacesI BelieveCitizensOrdinaryEnormousApathyIndifferentHelplessnessImpotenceApatheticOrdinary Citizens
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“It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. But when the rich did commit crimes, they often were not prosecuted, and if they were they could get out on bail, hire clever lawyers, get better treatment from judges. Somehow, the jails ended up full of poor black people.”

PeopleIfsLongEndsFactsWantedLawSidesBlackPoorRichCrimeJudgingPrisonCommittedLawyerCleverCommitGet BetterTreatmentJailPrisonerBlack PeopleBail
Book:A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present
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“Scholars, who pride themselves on speaking their minds, often engage in a form of self-censorship which is called "realism." To be "realistic" in dealing with a problem is to work only among the alternatives which the most powerful in society put forth. It is as if we are all confined to a, b, c, or d in the multiple choice test, when we know there is another possible answer. American society, although it has more freedom of expression than most societies in the world, thus sets limits beyond which respectable people are not supposed to think or speak.”

PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsWorldMindSelfProblemFormChoicesSpeakAnswersPowerfulExpressionPrideLimitsTestsAlternativesMost PowerfulRealisticCensorshipScholarRealismMultipleConfinedRespectableFreedom Of ExpressionAmerican SocietyMultiple ChoiceSelf Censorship
Book:The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy
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“It's not right to respond to terrorism by terrorizing other people. And furthermore, it's not going to help. Then you might say, "Yes, it's terrorizing people, but it's worth doing because it will end terrorism." But how much common sense does it take to know that you cannot end terrorism by indiscriminately dropping bombs?”

PeopleKnowsDoeEndsHelpingMightCommonTerrorismCommon SenseBombsDroppingDropping Bombs
Book:Terrorism and War
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“I came to the conclusion that war was an unacceptable way of solving whatever problems there were in the world--that there would be problems of tyranny, of injustice, of nations crossing frontiers and that injustice and tyranny should not be tolerated and should be fought and resisted, but the one thing that must not be used to solve that problem is war. Because war is inevitably the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. And that fact overwhelms whatever moral cause is somewhere buried in the history of that war.”

PeopleWorldWayShouldWarFactsProblemWould BeUsedNationsCausesNumbersMoralOne ThingKillingInjusticeSolveTyrannyConclusionBuriedFrontiersCrossingsLarge Numbers
Book:Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches 1963-2009
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“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
Book:You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
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“I believe there are huge numbers of people in this country who would be willing to have radical changes in our economic and social system in order to make it a more egalitarian society and do away with homelessness and hunger and clean up the environment. But these people have no voice. They have no way of expressing themselves. Elections give them no way of expressing themselves.”

PeopleWayGivingBelieveCountryWould BeOrderI BelieveSocialVoiceNumbersEnvironmentEconomicWillingHugeElectionCleanHungerRadicalHomelessnessSocial SystemsRadical ChangeHuge Numbers
Author:Howard Zinn
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“I start from the supposition that the world is topsyturvy, that things are all wrong, that the wrong people are in jail and the wrong people are out of jail, that the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power, that the wealth is distributed in this country and the world in such a way as not simply to require small reform but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth. I start from the supposition that we don't have to say too much about this because all we have to do is think about the state of the world today and realize that things are all upside down.”

PeopleThinkingWorldWayCountryStatesTodayRealizingWealthToo MuchReformJailWorld TodayUpside DownDrasticSupposition
Book:The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy
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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....”

PeopleWorldHumansCountryGovernmentFormValuesPracticeDemocracyRightsResourcesHatredThirdsHuman RightsDenyTerrorismHatedCorporationsThird WorldMultinationalsThird World CountriesMultinational Corporations
Author:Howard Zinn
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“For most Black people there is still poverty and desperation. The Ghettos still exist, and the proportion of Blacks in prison is still much greater than Whites. Today, there is less overt racism, but the economic injustices create an "institutional racism" which exists even while more Blacks are in high places, such as Condoleeza Rice in Bush's Administration and Obama running for President.”

PeopleStillsRunningTodayBlackPresidentPovertyGreaterEconomicRacismPrisonInjusticeAdministrationProportionBlack PeopleDesperationRiceGhettoHigh PlacesInstitutional RacismEconomic Injustice
Author:Howard Zinn
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“Because of the control of the media by corporate wealth, the discovery of truth depends on an alternative media, such as small radio stations, networks, programs. Also, alternative newspapers, which exist all over the country. Also, cable TV programs, which are not dependent on commercial advertising. Also, the internet, which can reach millions of people by-passing the conventional media.”

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Author:Howard Zinn
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“If you work through the existing structures you are going to be corrupted. By working through political system that poisons the atmosphere, even the progressive organizations, you can see it even nowadays in the US, where people on the "Left" are all caught in the electoral campaign and get into fierce arguments about should we support this third party candidate or that third party candidate. This is a sort of little piece of evidence that suggests that when you get into working through electoral politics you begin to corrupt your ideals.”

PeopleIfsShouldLittlesPoliticalLeftPartySupportPiecesEvidenceIdealsArgumentOrganizationThirdsStructureCaughtCampaignsAtmosphereCandidatesPoisonProgressiveFiercePolitical SystemsThird Parties
Author:Howard Zinn
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“When some people ask me about voting, they would say will you support this candidate or that candidate? I say: "I will support this candidate for one minute that I am in the voting booth. At that moment I will support A versus B, but before I am going to the voting booth, and after I leave the voting booth, I am going to concentrate on organizing people and not organizing electoral campaign."”

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“Majorities can be wrong, majorities can overrule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled, we could still have slavery. 80% of the population once enslaved 20% of the population. While run by majority rule that is ok. That is very flawed notion of what democracy is. Democracy has to take into account several things - proportionate requirements of people, not just needs of the majority, but also needs of the minority. Majority, especially in societies where the media manipulates public opinion, can be totally wrong and evil. People have to act according to conscience and not by majority vote.”

PeopleIfsNeedsStillsRunningEvilOpinionDemocracyRightsMediaConscienceVoteAccountsSlaveryMajorityNotionPopulationMinoritiesRequirementsPublic OpinionManipulateFlawedDemocracies HaveEvil PeopleMajority RuleMajority Vote
Author:Howard Zinn
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“No doubt that anarchist ideas are frightening to those in power. People in power can tolerate liberal ideas. They can tolerate ideas that call for reforms, but they cannot tolerate the idea that there will be no state, no central authority. So it is very important for them to ridicule the idea of anarchism to create this impression of anarchism as violent and chaotic. It is useful for them.”

PeopleImportantIdeasStatesDoubtAuthorityViolentImpressionReformNo DoubtFrighteningTolerateRidiculeAnarchismAnarchistChaotic
Author:Howard Zinn
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“I would prefer to use a very inclusive definition of the working class. I'd like to include all of those people who are, if they're not exploited by an immediate employer over them, they're exploited by the system and therefore have a cause to want to change the system. Having a very inclusive definition of the working class creates a great opportunity for organizing people.”

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Author:Howard Zinn
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“There is a hard core of people in the United States who will not be moved, whatever facts you present, from their conviction that this nation means only to do good, and almost always does good, in the world, that it is the beacon of liberty and freedom.”

PeopleWorldMeanDoeHardStatesFactsNationsUnitedLibertyUnited StatesMovedConvictionCoreFreedom And LibertyBeaconsHard CoreGood In The World
Book:The Historic Unfulfilled Promise
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“Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a 'war on terrorism' is a contradiction in terms.”

PeopleImportantWarFactsForceTermResultsNumbersKillingTerrorismOur TimeContradictionFutilityLarge NumbersWar On TerrorArmed ForcesWar On Terrorism
Book:A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
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“Throughout American history, the political leaders have always exhorted the American people to be nice and quiet and leave things to them. But when very serious evils confronted the American people, they had to go beyond the Congressmen and Senators, and they had to commit civil disobedience and they had even to break the law.”

PeopleLawPoliticalEvilLeaderBreakNiceSeriousQuietCommitAmerican HistoryBeing NiceSenatorsDisobedienceCivil DisobedienceCongressmanPolitical Leaders
Author:Howard Zinn
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“I was just a seventeen-year-old kid, going to Times Square to participate in this left-wing demonstration. The signs were for peace and justice and so on. But then I was attacked by police mounted on horseback and on foot. Before I knew it, I was clubbed and knocked unconscious. So it gave me a radical view of the United States, a critical view of the role of the state and of the instruments of the state - the police, the Army, and so on - as not being neutral at all in political battles, but being generally against workers and against striking people, against dissenters of all kinds.”

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“Here's a president who gets 47 or 48 percent of the vote and takes 100 percent of the power, as if he had a mandate. He snuck into the presidency with the aid of political cronies, his father's having appointed members of the Supreme Court, his brother governor of Florida. And then he takes total control. And this is a president who seems to react to everything with force. Now we've had two wars. We've killed a lot of people. For anybody who is interested in not being a warlike nation anymore, and becoming a nation respected in the world, it becomes important to defeat Bush.”

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“The stories coming out of Iraq everyday - the violence, the chaos, the deaths of Americans, the deaths of Iraqis... Of course the deaths of Iraqis are not played up as much. But when they count the corpses they see women and children. We are constantly killing the people who are suspected of something. Now, in the United States or under any decent system of justice, you don't kill people on suspicion. That's what you do when you bomb a house because there are suspected leaders there. But we've been doing that again and again and the result has been a toll of thousands of civilians.”

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“The problem of giving health care to everybody cannot be solved so long as we're spending huge sums of money for war. Already we have a very wasteful healthcare system, the most wasteful healthcare system in the world. I mean, we spend the most money and still have 40 million people without insurance. Compare us to Cuba. Cuba is our enemy, run by a dictator, Fidel Castro. But people in Cuba get health care at least equal to that of the United States - with very scarce resources. So I think this issue is the most important domestic issue.”

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“Though the Americans can be fooled, as they have been, and they can be propagandized, as they have been... But, as Lincoln said, "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time. But you can't fool all of the people all of the time." And so hope lies in the fact that little by little, even if the American people can be fooled, even if they continue to be fooled in the 2004 presidential election, they will gradually learn, as they have learned - for instance, in the Vietnam War and turned against the Vietnam War.”

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