Howard Zinn Quotes

107 Sourced Quotes

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.

Howard Zinn
I believe the American people have the capacity to create a new movement, which would change the direction of our nation from being a military power to being a peaceful nation, using our enormous wealth for human needs, here and abroad.

Howard Zinn
When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not fall in meekly behind them. We who protest...are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress.

Howard Zinn
Yes, we're dreamers. We want it all. We want a peaceful world. We want an egalitarian world. We don't want war. We don't want capitalism. We want a decent society.

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
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
I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.

Howard Zinn
Now I have been studying very closely what happens every day in the courts in Boston, Massachusetts. You would be astounded--maybe you wouldn't, maybe you have been around, maybe you have lived, maybe you have thought, maybe you have been hit--at how the daily rounds of injustice make their way through this marvelous thing that we call "due process.

Howard Zinn
Very important thing to keep in mind, that when justice comes and when injustices are remedied, they're not remedied by the initiative of the national government or the politicians. They only respond to the power of social movements.

Howard Zinn
When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won.

Howard Zinn
My hope is that the memory of death and disgrace will be so intense that the people of the United States will be able to listen to a message that the rest of the world, sobered by wars without end, can also understand: that war itself is the enemy of the human race.

Howard Zinn
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?

Howard Zinn
The only way things will happen is if people get over the notion that they must see immediate success. If they get over that notion and persist, then they will see things happen before they even realize it.

Howard Zinn
What happened in World War II was what happened in war generally, and that was whatever the initiating cause, and however clear the moral reason is for the war in which one side looks better than the other, by the time the war ends both sides have been engaged in evil.

Howard Zinn
Should we not begin to redefine patriotism? We need to expand it beyond that narrow nationalism which has caused so much death and suffering. If national boundaries should not be obstacles to trade-we call it globalization-should they also not be obstacles to compassion and generosity?

Howard Zinn
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.

Howard Zinn
It was an old lesson learned by governments: that war solves problems of control.

Howard Zinn