Howard Zinn - Law Quotes

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The First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights in the United States Constitution were being violated in Albany again and again — freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the equal protection of the laws — I could count at least 30 such violations. Yet the president, sworn to uphold the Constitution, and all the agencies of the United States government at his disposal, were nowhere to be seen.

Howard Zinn
Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.

Howard Zinn
The rule of law does not do away with the unequal distribution of wealth and power, but reinforces that inequality with the authority of law. It allocates wealth and poverty in such calculated and indirect ways as to leave the victim bewildered.

Howard Zinn
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.

Howard Zinn
Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories, whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is.

Howard Zinn
Before God and high heaven, is there a law for one man which is not a law for every other man?

Howard Zinn
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?

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