Howard Zinn

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war.

But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is to tell the truth.

If you want to end terrorism, you have to stop being terrorists

When a nation issues ultimatums, it leaves no room for compromise and ensures that war will continue.

I am supposing or perhaps only hoping that our future may be found in the pasts fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.

Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.

War itself is the enemy of the human race.

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

If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates.

Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.

Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.

We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.

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.

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.

Most wars, after all, present themselves as humanitarian endeavors to help people.

The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.

There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at critical points to create a power that governments cannot suppress.

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

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable.

In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.

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.

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.