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. Howard Zinn More Quotes by Howard Zinn More Quotes From Howard Zinn When in all the nations of the world the rule of law is the darling of the leaders and the plague of the people, we ought to begin to recognize this. Howard Zinn leader law people When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war. Howard Zinn government war people Being fired has some of the advantages of dying without its supreme disadvantages. People say extra-nice things about you, and you get to hear them. Howard Zinn nice dying people Politics is pointless if it does nothing to enhance the beauty of our lives. Howard Zinn our-lives ifs doe 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 lite, 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. Howard Zinn hard-work jobs father These people—the employed, the somewhat privileged—are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls. Howard Zinn class people fall It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status. Howard Zinn reading military country There is civil disobedience against the military machine, protest against police brutality directed especially at people of color. Howard Zinn color military people 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. Howard Zinn jail military moving We cannot be secure by limiting our liberties, as some of our political leaders are demanding, but only by expanding themWe should take our example not from the military and political leaders shouting 'retaliate' and 'war' but from the doctors and nurses and firemen and policemen who have been saving lives in the midst of mayhem, whose first thoughts are not violence, but healing, and not vengeance, but compassion. Howard Zinn military healing war The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Howard Zinn catalyst-for-change opinion ideas Charles Beard warned us that governments-inc luding the government of the United States-are not neutral, that they represent the dominant economic interests, and that their Constitutions are intended to serve these interests. Howard Zinn beard united-states government If racism can't be shown to be natural then it is the result of certain conditions, and we are impelled to eliminate those conditions. Howard Zinn racism race natural The white population could not possibly be unaffected by those events - some whites more stubborn in their defense of segregation, but others beginning to think in different ways. And the black population was transformed, having risen up in mass action for the first time, feeling its power, knowing now that if the old order could be shaken it could be toppled. Howard Zinn white order thinking If you don't know history, it is as if you were born yesterday. Howard Zinn born knows yesterday 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. Howard Zinn justice believe thinking They didn't give their lives for their country! their lives were taken from them by their government. Howard Zinn taken war country Tyranny is Tyranny, let it come from whom it may. Howard Zinn tyranny may 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 eye war blood The mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction-so tremblingly respectful of states and statesmen and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people's movements-that we need some counterforce to avoid being crushed into submission. Howard Zinn mountain book people
