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War Quotes by Howard Zinn

78 War quotes by Howard Zinn

All War quotes Howard Zinn’s page

A flag cannot cover the shame of killing innocent people. The quotes argue that war often hides behind humanitarian language while causing indiscriminate death. They also point out that fighting terrorism with war may be just another form of terrorism. They also note that ultimatums leave no room for compromise, pushing conflict onward.

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War itself is the enemy of the human race.

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“How can you have a war on terrorism while war itself is terrorism!”

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

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In between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.

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In war, good guys always become bad guys.

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

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

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“party politics and religion now substituting for class conflict.”

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

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Education becomes most rich and alive when it confronts the reality of moral conflict in the world.

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

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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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Terrorism and war have something in common. They both involve the killing of innocent people to achieve what the killers believe is…

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Yes, we're dreamers. We want it all. We want a peaceful world. We want an egalitarian world. We don't want war. We…

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War is terrorism ... Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause. That's what terrorists…

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

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One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression. Patriotism becomes the order of the day, and those who question…

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“And the New York Journal of Commerce, half-playfully, half-seriously, wrote: "Let us go to war. The world has become stale and insipid,…

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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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Should we not begin to redefine patriotism? We need to expand it beyond that narrow nationalism which has caused so much death…

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The term 'just war' is an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to…

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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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“Roosevelt was as much concerned to end the oppression of Jews as Lincoln was to end slavery during the Civil War; their…

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Memorial Day will be celebrated ... by the usual betrayal of the dead, by the hypocritical patriotism of the politicians and contractors…

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“My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as…

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Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals the…

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“Jackson began raids into Florida, arguing it was a sanctuary for escaped slaves and for marauding Indians. Florida, he said, was essential…

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I did not know much history when I became a bombardier in the U.S. Air Force in World War II. Only after…

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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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“What the [Clinton/Lewinsky scandal] showed was that a matter of personal behavior could crowd out of the public's attention far more serious…

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If we trace origins of anarchism in the United States, then probably Henry David Thoreau is the closest you can come to…

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“It would take either a full-scale slave rebellion or a full-scale war to end such a deeply entrenched system. If a rebellion,…

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“The American Anti-Slavery Society, on the other hand, said the war was “waged solely for the detestable and horrible purpose of extending…

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“Frederick Douglass, former slave, extraordinary speaker and writer, wrote in his Rochester newspaper the North Star, January 21, 1848, of “the present…

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“In Guatemala, in 1954, a legally elected government was overthrown by an invasion force of mercenaries trained by the CIA at military…

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“The argument that there are just wars often rests on the social system of the nation engaging in war. It is supposed…

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“But there is also (though much of this is kept from us, to keep us intimidated and without hope) the bubbling of…

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“As the war went on, opposition grew. The American Peace Society printed a newspaper, the Advocate of Peace, which published poems, speeches,…

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“Thus, in that inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history, I prefer to try to tell the…

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“The Greatest Generation? They tell me I am a member of the greatest generation. That's because I saw combat duty as a…

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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…