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Time Quotes by Howard Zinn

44 Time quotes by Howard Zinn

All Time quotes Howard Zinn’s page

Howard Zinn examines how power, history, and obedience shape societies. He shows that control isn’t just force, and that wars and corporate dominance drain moral energy. The quotes warn that remembering the past is key to avoiding future cruelty for all.

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The future is an infinite succession of presents.

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The fact that war belongs to the past, does not mean it has to be part of the future.

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The violence of our time is caused by obedience.

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We must transfer our anger to the brutalities of our time.

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War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.

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War in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.

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To ward off alienation and gloom, it is only necessary to remember the unremembered heroes of the past, and to look around…

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I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than…

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I didn't want to spent a lot of close time with someone who believed that fun is a bourgeois indulgence.

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Democracy depends on people speaking out, and in times of great crisis, on people creating a commotion.

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George Orwell said, "Whoever controls the past controls the future," by which he meant that history is incredibly important in shaping the…

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What happened in World War II was what happened in war generally, and that was whatever the initiating cause, and however clear…

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Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the…

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“Those tears, that anger, cast into the past, deplete our moral energy for the present. And the lines are not always clear.…

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“We don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an endless succession of presents, and to live now…

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The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of…

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To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a…

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But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the…

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Through repeated practice of the body scan over time, we come to grasp the reality of our body as whole in the…

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“There were moments of racial unity. Lawrence Goodwyn found in east Texas an unusual coalition of black and white public officials: it…

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Human beings, whatever their backgrounds, are more open than we think, that their behavior cannot be confidently predicted from their past, that…

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There is the past and its continuing horrors: violence, war, prejudices against those who are different, outrageous monopolization of the good earth's…

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I see this as the central issue of our time: how to find a substitute for war in human ingenuity, imagination, courage,…

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To be hopeful in bad times is based on the fact that human history is not only of cruelty, but also of…

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We were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when…

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“Unemployment, hard times, were growing in 1914. Could guns divert attention and create some national consensus against an external enemy? It surely…

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“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a…

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“The system was psychological and physical at the same time. The slaves were taught discipline, were impressed again and again with the…

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“Carl Degler says (Out of Our Past): “No new social class came to power through the door of the American revolution. The…

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Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories,…

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“Imagine the American people united for the first time in a movement for fundamental change. Imagine society’s power taken away from the…

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“And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand Utopian future. The future…

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We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media,…

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Is not nationalism - that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder - one of…

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The awful scenes of death and suffering we were witnessing on our television screens have been going on in other parts of…

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History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the…

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The inferior position of blacks, the exclusion of Indians from the new society, the establishment of supremacy for the rich and powerful…

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“The system was psychological and physical at the same time. The slaves were taught discipline, were impressed again and again with the…

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We cannot create blueprint for future society, but it is good to think about that. It is good to have in mind…

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“If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities…

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More by Howard Zinn

“A black man, Benjamin Banneker, who taught himself mathematics and astronomy, predicted accurately a solar eclipse, and was appointed to plan the new city…

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

“a good education is a synthesis of book learning and involvement in social action, because each enrich the other. The accumulation of knowledge, while…

The mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction-so tremblingly respectful of states and statesmen and…

Let's face a historical truth: we have never had a "free market", we have always had government intervention in the economy, and indeed that…

I can UNDERSTAND pessimism, but I don't BELIEVE in it. It's not simply a matter of faith, but of historical EVIDENCE. Not overwhelming evidence,…

Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it. It is a corrective to the sluggishness of…

Now I have been studying very closely what happens every day in the courts in Boston, Massachusetts. You would be astounded--maybe you wouldn't, maybe…

They were not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, they were absent in the Constitution and they were invisible in the new political democracy.…

“Sexual purity was to be the special virtue of a woman. It was assumed that men, as a matter of biological nature, would sin,…

“Middle-class Americans might be invited to join a new elite by attacks against the corruption of the established rich. The New Yorker Cadwallader Colden,…

If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will…

We were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts…

Behind the deceptive words designed to entice people into supporting violence -- words like democracy, freedom, self-defense, national security -- there is the reality…

“George Washington had turned down the requests of blacks, seeking freedom, to fight in the Revolutionary army. So when the British military commander in…