American historian & social activist (1922-2010)
As you know, the founding fathers were not a multicultural group. There were no women, no Native Americans, no blacks, and virtually no poor people.
HOWARD ZINN
Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches, 1963-2009
When you fight a war against a tyrant, who do you kill? You kill the victims of the tyrant.
HOWARD ZINN
Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches, 1963-2009
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.
HOWARD ZINN
You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
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 you have been around, maybe you have lived, maybe you have thought, maybe you have been hit--at how the daily rounds of injustice make their way through this marvelous thing that we call "due process."
HOWARD ZINN
Failure to Quit: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian
But what about voting and elections? Civil disobedience--we don't need that much of it, we are told, because we can go through the electoral system. And by now we should have learned, but maybe we haven't, for we grew up with the notion that the voting booth is a sacred place, almost like a confessional. You walk into the voting booth and you come out and they snap your picture and then put it in the papers with a beatific smile on your face. You've just voted; that is democracy. But if you even read what the political scientists say--although who can?--about the voting process, you find that the voting process is a sham. Totalitarian states love voting. You get people to the polls and they register their approval. I know there is a difference--they have one party and we have two parties. We have one more party than they have, you see.
HOWARD ZINN
Voices of a People's History of the United States
There is the past and its continuing horrors: violence, war, prejudices against those who are different, outrageous monopolization of the good earth's wealth by a few, political power in the hands of liars and murderers, the building of prisons instead of schools, the poisoning of the press and the entire culture by money. It is easy to become discouraged observing this, especially since this is what the press and television insist that we look at, and nothing more.
HOWARD ZINN
A People's History of the United States
It's a strange thing, we think that law brings order. Law doesn't. How do we know that law does not bring order? Look around us. We live under the rule of law. Notice how much order we have?
HOWARD ZINN
Voices of a People's History of the United States
In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims.
HOWARD ZINN
A People's History of the United States
I am not an absolute pacifist, because I can't rule out the possibility that under some, carefully defined circumstances, some degree of violence may be justified, if it is focused directly at a great evil. Slave revolts are justified, and if John Brown had really succeeded in arousing such revolts throughout the South, it would have been much preferable to losing 600,000 lives in the Civil War, where the makers of the war -- unlike slave rebels -- would not have as their first priority the plight of the black slaves, as shown by the betrayal of black interests after the war. Again, the Zapatista uprising seems justified to me, but some armed struggles that start for a good cause get out of hand and the ensuing violence becomes indiscriminate. Each situation has to be evaluated separately, for all are different. In general, I believe in non-violent direct action, which involve organizing large numbers of people, whereas too often violent uprisings are the product of a small group. If enough people are organized, violence can be minimized in bringing about social change.
HOWARD ZINN
ZNet forum reply, May 26, 1999
I came to the conclusion that war was an unacceptable way of solving whatever problems there were in the world--that there would be problems of tyranny, of injustice, of nations crossing frontiers and that injustice and tyranny should not be tolerated and should be fought and resisted, but the one thing that must not be used to solve that problem is war. Because war is inevitably the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. And that fact overwhelms whatever moral cause is somewhere buried in the history of that war.
HOWARD ZINN
Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches, 1963-2009
We are talking about obedience to law--law, this marvelous invention of modern times, which we attribute to Western civilization, and which we talk about proudly. The rule of law, oh, how wonderful, all these courses in Western civilization all over the land. Remember those bad old days when people were exploited by feudalism? Everything was terrible in the Middle Ages--but now we have Western civilization, the rule of law. The rule of law has regularized and maximized the injustice that existed before the rule of law, that is what the rule of law has done. Let us start looking at the rule of law realistically, not with the metaphysical complacency with which we always examined it before.
HOWARD ZINN
Voices of a People's History of the United States
Crosses and gallows -- that deadly historic juxtaposition.
HOWARD ZINN
Howard Zinn on Democratic Education
Any humane and reasonable person must conclude that if the ends, however desirable, are uncertain and the means are horrible and certain, these means must not be employed.
HOWARD ZINN
Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice
Human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.
HOWARD ZINN
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
Tyranny is Tyranny, let it come from whom it may.
HOWARD ZINN
A People's History of the United States
What happened in World War II was what happened in war generally, and that was whatever the initiating cause, and however clear the moral reason is for the war in which one side looks better than the other, by the time the war ends both sides have been engaged in evil.
HOWARD ZINN
Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches, 1963-2009