Quotes from Howard Zinn

Slavery existed in the African states, and it was sometimes used by Europeans to justify their own slave trade. But, as Davidson points out, the "slaves" of Africa were more like the serfs of Europe—in other words, like most of the population of Europe.

If you permit unprincipled and ambitious men to monopolize the soil, they will become masters of the country in the certain order of cause and effect. . . .

You can't be neutral on a moving train," I would tell them. Some were baffled by the metaphor, especially if they took it literally and tried to dissect its meaning. Others immediately saw what I meant: that events are already moving in certain deadly directions, and to be neutral means to accept that.

Since the Indians were better woodsmen than the English and virtually impossible to track down, the method was to feign peaceful intentions, let them settle down and plant their corn wherever they chose, and then, just before harvest, fall upon them, killing as many as possible and burning the corn. . . . Within two or three years of the massacre the English had avenged the deaths of that day many times over.

Emma Willard told the legislature that the education of women has been too exclusively directed to fit them for displaying to advantage the charms of youth and beauty The problem, she said, was that the taste of men, whatever it might happen to be, has made into a standard for the formation of the female character. Reason and religion teach us, she said, that we too are primary existences...not the satellites of men.

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.

Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.

the atmosphere of war brutalizes everyone involved, begets a fanaticism in which the original moral factor is buried at the bottom of a heap of atrocities committed by all sides.

The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is.

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

Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power than can transform the world.

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.

A jury is always a more orthodox body than any defendant brought before it; for blacks it is usually a whiter group, for poor people, a more prosperous group... Another lesson about the justice system: the way the judge charges the jury inevitably pushes them one way or the other, limits their independent judgment.

So long as atrocities remain remote, abstract, they will be tolerated, even by decent people.

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.

The country therefore was not "born free" but born slave and free, servant and master, tenant and landlord, poor and rich.

Ruling elites seem to have learned through the generations—consciously or not—that war makes them more secure against internal trouble.

IWW organizer Joseph Ettor said: If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property of the capitalists. . . .

a good education is a synthesis of book learning and involvement in social action, because each enrich the other. The accumulation of knowledge, while fascinating in itself, is not sufficient without action

We don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an endless succession of presents, and to live now as we think humans should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

There was an idea in the air, becoming clearer and stronger, an idea not just in the theories of Karl Marx but in the dreams of writers and artists through the ages: that people might cooperatively use the treasures of the earth to make life better for everyone, not just a few.

the future is an infinite succession of presents

People should go where they are not supposed to go, say what they are not supposed to say, and stay when they are told to leave.

Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war?