{"author":"Howard Zinn","author_id":"Howard+Zinn","total_quotes":63,"quotes":[{"text":"So long as atrocities remain remote, abstract, they will be tolerated, even by decent people.","author":"Howard Zinn","tags":["pacifism","revolution","violence","war"],"id":5872,"author_id":"Howard+Zinn"},{"text":"What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor--inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing--permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now 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. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.","author":"Howard Zinn","tags":["patriotism","united-states","war"],"id":12341,"author_id":"Howard+Zinn"},{"text":"How skillful to tax the middle class to pay for the relief of the poor, building resentment on top of humiliation! How adroit to bus poor black youngsters into poor white neighborhoods, in a violent exchange of impoverished schools, while the schools of the rich remain untouched and the wealth of the nation, doled out carefully where children need free milk, is drained for billion-dollar aircraft carriers. How ingenious to meet the demands of blacks and women for equality by giving them small special benefits, and setting them in competition with everyone else for jobs made scares by an irrational, wasteful system. How wise to turn the fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred - by economic inequity - faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by men in executive offices.","author":"Howard Zinn","tags":["capitalism","oppresion","politics"],"id":24019,"author_id":"Howard+Zinn"},{"text":"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.","author":"Howard Zinn","tags":["nationalism","patriotism","war"],"id":29818,"author_id":"Howard+Zinn"},{"text":"One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.","author":"Howard Zinn","tags":["freedom","expression "],"id":62215,"author_id":"Howard+Zinn"},{"text":"I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished.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.","author":"Howard Zinn","tags":["crimes","criminal-justice-system","cycle-of-violence","desperation","greed","homelessness","imprisonment","incarceration","jail","justice","poverty","prison","punishment","racism","retribution","unemployment"],"id":66537,"author_id":"Howard+Zinn"},{"text":"Civil disobedience, as I put it to the audience, was not the problem, despite the warnings of some that it threatened social stability, that it led to anarchy. The greatest danger, I argued, was civil obedience, the submission of individual conscience to governmental authority. Such obedience led to the horrors we saw in totalitarian states, and in liberal states it led to the public's acceptance of war whenever the so-called democratic government decided on it...In such a world, the rule of law maintains things as they are. Therefore, to begin the process of change, to stop a war, to establish justice, it may be necessary to break the law, to commit acts of civil disobedience, as Southern black did, as antiwar protesters did.","author":"Howard Zinn","tags":["acquiescence","civil-disobedience","dangers-of-obedience","justice","oppression","rule-of-law"],"id":66666,"author_id":"Howard+Zinn"},{"text":"There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States.","author":"Howard Zinn","tags":["democracy","government","oligarchy","plutocracy"],"id":67699,"author_id":"Howard+Zinn"},{"text":"History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the government tells you. But knowing a bit of history--while it would not absolutely prove the government was lying in a given instance--might make you skeptical, lead you to ask questions, make it more likely that you would find out the truth.","author":"Howard Zinn","tags":["critical-thinking","government","history","knoweldge","proof","questions"],"id":69913,"author_id":"Howard+Zinn"},{"text":"Slavery was immensely profitable to some masters. James Madison told a British visitor shortly after the American Revolution that he could make 257 dollars on every (black slave) in a year, and spend only 12 or 13 dollars on his keep.","author":"Howard Zinn","tags":["american-revolution","food-for-thought","founding-fathers","slavery","slavery-history","slavery-in-the-united-states"],"id":83025,"author_id":"Howard+Zinn"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":63,"pages":7,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}