Howard Zinn Quotes
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.
Hope is essential to any political struggle for radical change when the overall social climate promotes disillusionment and despair.
But remember, this power of the people on top depends on the obedience of the people below. When people stop obeying, they have no power.
But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is... to tell the truth.
Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.
The problem in this world is not civil disobedience...th e problem in this world is civil obedience.
Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.
The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface.
George Orwell said, "Whoever controls the past controls the future," by which he meant that history is incredibly important in shaping the world view of the next generation of people.
What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but "who is sitting in" - and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.
In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.
Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.
Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.
The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth.
When we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress.
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.
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.
Since war itself is the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on terrorism is profoundly self-contradictory.
Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.
We all have an enormous responsibility to bring to the attention of others information they do not have, which has the potential of causing them to rethink long-held ideas.
People should go where they are not supposed to go, say what they are not supposed to say, and stay when they are told to leave.
War is terrorism ... Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause. That's what terrorists are about.
What we have is a more sophisticated form of imperialism, which is economic. But lurking in the background, always ready to go, is an armed force.
When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won.
When you fight a war against a tyrant, who do you kill? You kill the victims of the tyrant.
One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression. Patriotism becomes the order of the day, and those who question the war are seen as traitors, to be silenced and imprisoned.
You can't be neutral on a moving train.
The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured.
The Roman Empire came to an end, but the Roman people didn't come to an end, so I see the American Empire coming to an end just as other empires have come to an end.
To ward off alienation and gloom, it is only necessary to remember the unremembered heroes of the past, and to look around us for the unnoticed heroes of the present.
The strike, the boycott, the refusal to serve, the ability to paralyze the functioning of a complex social structure-these remain potent weapons against the most fearsome state or corporate power.
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.
I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own.
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.
If you join a fight for social justice you may win or lose, but just by being part of the struggle, you win, and your life will be better for it.
It's a strange thing, we think that law brings order. Law doesn't. How do we know that law does not bring order? Look around us. We live under the rule of law. Notice how much order we have?
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.
The chief problem in historical honesty is not outright lying. It is omission or de-emphasis of important data. The definition of 'important', of course, depends on one's values.
Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.
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.
