Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral On A Moving Train: A Personal History Of Our Times Quotes

You can't be neutral on a moving train.

But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation.

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.

Education becomes most rich and alive when it confronts the reality of moral conflict in the world.

Politics is pointless if it does nothing to enhance the beauty of our lives.

Perhaps the most important thing I learned was about democracy, that democracy is not our government, our constitution, our legal structure. Too often they are enemies of democracy.

I didn't want to spent a lot of close time with someone who believed that fun is a bourgeois indulgence.

Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.