Howard Zinn Quotes (1922-2010)

“We can now reintroduce genuine socialism to a world feeling the sickness of capitalism-its nationalist hatreds, its perpetual warfare, riches for a small number of people in a small number of countries, and hunger, homelessness, insecurity for everyone else.”

“Surely, we want to be objective if that means telling the truth as we see it, not concealing information that may be embarrassing to our point of view. But we don’t want to be objective if it means pretending that ideas don’t play a part in the social struggles of our time, that we don’t take sides in those struggles. Indeed, it is impossible to be neutral.”

“Is there a "national interest" when a few people decide on war, and huge numbers of others here and abroad-are killed or crippled as a result of such a decision? Should citizens not ask in whose interest are we doing what we are doing? Then why not, I came to think, tell the story of wars not through the eyes of the generals and diplomats but from the viewpoints of the GIs, of the parents who received the black-bordered telegrams, even of "the enemy."”

“The term "just war" contains an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people.”

“In all the solemn statements by self-important politicians and newspaper columnists about a coming war against Iraq, and even in the troubled comments by some who are opposed to the war, there is something missing. The talk is about strategy and tactics and geopolitics, and personalities. It is about air war and ground war, about alliances and weapons of mass destruction, and arms inspections, about oil and natural gas, about nation-building and “regime change.” What is missing is what an American war on Iraq will do to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of ordinary human beings who are not concerned with geopolitics and military strategy, and who just want their children to live, to grow up. They are not concerned with “national security” but with personal security, with food and shelter and medical care and peace. I am speaking of those Iraqis and those Americans who will, with absolute certainty, die in such a war, or lose arms or legs, or be blinded. Or they will be stricken with some strange and agonizing sickness, which will lead to their bringing deformed children into the world (as happened to families in Vietnam, in Iraq, and also in the United States).”

“Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.”

“If you don't know history, it's as if you were born yesterday. If you were born yesterday, then any leader can tell you anything.”

“To white Americans of the thirties, however, blacks North and South were invisible. Only the radicals made an attempt to break the racial barriers: Socialists, Trotskyists, Communists most of all.”

“If those in charge of our society — politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television — can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.”

“If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, nor as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country, one's fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles.”

“SNCC workers have found that F.B.I. men in the South often share the segregationist views of the people around them; this is reflected in the lack of enthusiasm which F.B.I. men show in handling civil rights cases. Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer once told an F.B.I. agent, "If I get to heaven and I see you there, I will tell St. Peter to send me on back to Mississippi!"”

“SNCC workers have found that F.B.I. men in the South often share the segregationist views of the people around them; this is reflected in the lack of enthusiasm which F.B.I. men show in handling civil rights cases. Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer once told an F.B.I. agent, "If I get to heaven and I see you there, I will tell St. Peter to send me on back to Mississippi!"”

“Abnormal rates of cancer for farmworkers in California aroused the Chicano community. Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers fasted for thirty-five days in 1988 to call attention to these conditions.”

“As Dick Gregory has said, any other group of people in the world who would take arms and rise up against the tyranny of their government would be hailed as "Freedom Fighters." But Negroes are expected to adhere to nonviolence.”

“In the 1830s, under Andrew Jackson and then his successor Martin Van Buren, the military moved against the Indians in the southeastern United States in what was officially called, in the title of the law authorizing it, Indian Removal. Today we'd call it ethnic cleansing.”

“When John Lewis, a young Alabama-born SNCC leader, much arrested, much beaten, tried to introduce a stronger note of outrage at the meeting, he was censored by the leaders of the march, who insisted he omit certain sentences critical of the national government and urging militant action.”

“Then James Baldwin stood at the rostrum, his huge eyes burning into the crowd: "The sheriff and his deputies ... these ignorant people... were created by the good white people on the hill-and in Washington-and they've created a monster they can't control.... It's not an act of God. It is deliberately done, deliberately created by the American Republic."”

“In his Harlem apartment in New York, a young Negro teacher of mathematics named Bob Moses saw a photo in the newspapers of the Greensboro sit-inners. "The students in that picture had a certain look on their faces, sort of sullen, angry, determined. Before, the Negro in the South had always looked on the defensive, cringing. This time they were taking the initiative. They were kids my age, and I knew this had something to do with my own life."”

“Randall's writing fuses her commitment to revolutionary change with her remarkable poetic sensibility.”

“He was a very funny man and warm man. Told jokes all the time. Very self-deprecating. And very humble. When it came to his students and students who disagreed with him -- and a lot of students in our classes disagreed with him; it was the mid-'80s, Reagan and all that, a very conservative era -- he didn't sit there and shut them down. ... He would lecture for a little while, maybe a guest speaker, and then it was an open forum for students to talk and challenge him. He enjoyed being challenged. It kept him fresh and it kept him on his toes and it kept him connected to the next generation. He always wanted to connect to young people.”

“Historian Howard Zinn observed in a new edition of Soldiers in Revolt, the classic history of the GI Movement: "A point can be reached where men and women in uniform can no longer tolerate what they begin to see as an unjust war. It is encouraging to be reminded of the basic desire of human beings to live at peace with other human beings, once they have divested themselves of the deceptions, the nationalism, and the racism that is provoked by war."”

“You tell me what has changed. You tell me what a Black president means for the average Black American. Tell me how it is humanely permissible to hold undocumented immigrants in detention camps, outfit pregnant women with electronic bracelets to track their where-abouts, and uphold a war where indebted monies continue to be spent on the violent militarized occupation of foreign countries, instead of indigenous-originated programs to rebuild the broken infrastructure resulting from failed regimes. As the late historian and social activist Howard Zinn states, "If you want to end terrorism, you have to stop being terrorists."”

“Historian and activist Howard Zinn died in 2010, and the progressive world greatly misses his spirit and guidance. One wonders what he’d have to say about America today — one in which senators create legislation in secret and a president denigrates foes and allies alike via Twitter. What would he, a former Cub Scout, think about the president’s recent speech in which he exhorted Boy Scouts to boo a previous president? We can be pretty sure that he’d be dismayed and disgusted by an America where CEOs make 271 times the pay of an average worker... He’d certainly be no fan of a culture that made serious, though unsuccessful, attempts to ban his signature work, A People’s History of the United States.”

“"We live in a beautiful country," writes historian Howard Zinn. "But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back."”

“There are many Americans who would be mortified to be associated with their government's policies. The most scholarly, scathing, incisive, hilarious critiques of the hypocrisy and the contradictions in U.S. government policy come from American citizens. When the rest of the world wants to know what the U.S. government is up to, we turn to Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Howard Zinn, Ed Herman, Amy Goodman, Michael Albert, Chalmers Johnson, William Blum, and Anthony Arnove to tell us what's really going on.”