Howard Zinn Quotes About Country

Quotes about: Country

• Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.

  Howard Zinn

  Inspirational, Death, Running

• If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, not as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country, one's fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles.

  Howard Zinn

  Loyalty, Country, Government

  Howard Zinn (1990). “Declarations of Independence: Cross-examining American Ideology”, Perennial

• One percent of the nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another: small property owners against the propertyless, black against white, native-born against foreign-born, intellectuals and professionals against the uneducated and the unskilled. These groups have resented one another and warred against one another with such vehemence and violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy country.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, White, Black

  Howard Zinn (2015). “A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present”, p.632, Routledge

• When the Democrats are attacked for [inciting class warfare] they shrink back. They don't say what obviously should be said, "Yes, there is class warfare. There has always been class warfare in this country." The reason the Democrats shrink back is because the Democrats and the Republicans are on the same side of the class war. They have slightly different takes. The Democrats are part of the upper class that is more willing to make concessions to the lower class in order to maintain their power.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, War, Order

• Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals the fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such as world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Jobs, Sex

• Terrorism has replaced Communism as the rationale for the militarization of the country [America], for military adventures abroad, and for the suppression of civil liberties at home. It serves the same purpose, serving to create hysteria.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Military, Home

  Howard Zinn (2011). “Terrorism and War”, p.38, Seven Stories Press

• If we have learned anything in the past ten years, it is that these lovely things about America were never lovely. We have been expansionist and aggressive and mean to other people from the beginning. And we've been aggressive and mean to people in this country, and we've allocated the wealth of this country in a very unjust way. We've never had justice in our courts for the poor people, for black people, for radicals. Now how can we boast that America is a very special place? It's not that special. It really isn't.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Mean, Past

  "The Problem is Civil Obedience". www.thirdworldtraveler.com. 1970.

• We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in Third World countries whose resources are coveted by multinational corporations. That hatred we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism....

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Rights, Government

  "A People's History of the United States". Book by Howard Zinn, www.huffingtonpost.com. 1980.

• Because of the control of the media by corporate wealth, the discovery of truth depends on an alternative media, such as small radio stations, networks, programs. Also, alternative newspapers, which exist all over the country. Also, cable TV programs, which are not dependent on commercial advertising. Also, the internet, which can reach millions of people by-passing the conventional media.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Discovery, Media

  "Zinn Speaks". Interview with Wajahat Ali, www.counterpunch.org. April 19, 2008.

• People of the United States have to really consider whether they want to be an empire. Sweden is not worried about terrorism. New Zealand is not worried about terrorism. Holland is not worried about terrorism. Why not be a modest little country without all of these enormous ambitions?

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Ambition, People

• I start from the supposition that the world is topsyturvy, that things are all wrong, that the wrong people are in jail and the wrong people are out of jail, that the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power, that the wealth is distributed in this country and the world in such a way as not simply to require small reform but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth. I start from the supposition that we don't have to say too much about this because all we have to do is think about the state of the world today and realize that things are all upside down.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Thinking, Jail

  Howard Zinn (1997). “The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy”, p.404, Seven Stories Press

• If what your country is doing seems to you practically and morally wrong, is dissent the highest form of patriotism?

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Patriotism, Form

  "Dissent In Pursuit Of Equality, Life, Liberty And Happiness: An Interview With Historian Howard Zinn" by Sharon Basco, July 03, 2002.

• Surely, if it is the right of the people to "alter or abolish," it is their right to criticize, even severely, policies they believe destructive of the ends for which government has been established. This principle, in the Declaration of Independence, suggests that true patriotism lies in supporting the values the country is supposed to cherish: equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. When our government compromises, undermines, or attacks those values, it is being unpatriotic.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Lying, Believe

  Howard Zinn (2013). “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress”, p.112, City Lights Books

• I do take the threat of terrorism seriously. You cannot eliminate that threat or diminish that threat by bombing a country.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Terrorism, Threat

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I believe there are huge numbers of people in this country who would be willing to have radical changes in our economic and social system in order to make it a more egalitarian society and do away with homelessness and hunger and clean up the environment. But these people have no voice. They have no way of expressing themselves. Elections give them no way of expressing themselves.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Believe, Order

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. January 10, 2001.

• They didn't give their lives for their country! their lives were taken from them by their government.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, War, Taken

• The UN should arrange, as US forces leave, for an international group of peacekeepers and negotiators from the Arab countries to bring together Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and work out a solution for self-governance that would give all three groups a share in political power. Simultaneously, the UN should arrange for shipments of food and medicine, from the United States and other countries, as well as engineers to help rebuild the country.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Self, Medicine

  "How can America get out of Iraq?" by Noam Chomsky, Jonathan Schell, Howard Zinn, William Polk, www.theguardian.com. May 12, 2004.

• The United States builds weapons presumably secretly, and then it sells them to other countries. So the whole business of secrecy is kind of a fake issue because hardly anything technological remains a secret for very long.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Issues, Long

  "Interview with Howard Zinn: A People’s History of the United States". Interview with Sean Carswell and Todd Taylor, razorcake.org. October 18, 2001.

• People who have no respect for human life or for freedom or justice have taken over this beautiful country of ours. It will be up to the American people to take it back.

  Howard Zinn

  Beautiful, Country, Taken

  Howard Zinn (2012). “The Historic Unfulfilled Promise”, p.110, City Lights Publishers

• I did not feel very patriotic. I did not feel proud of our country, seeing that we were bombing peasant villages, that we were not just hitting military targets, that children were being killed. We were terrorizing the North Vietnamese with our enormous Air Force. They had no Air Force at all. They were a little pitiful country and we were terrorizing them with our bombs. And no, I did not feel proud at all.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Children, Military

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I did not feel proud of our country, seeing that we were bombing peasant villages, that we were not just hitting military targets, that children were being killed. We were terrorizing the North Vietnamese with our enormous Air Force. They had no Air Force at all. They were a little pitiful country and we were terrorizing them with our bombs. And no, I did not feel proud at all.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Children, Military

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Military, Reading

  Howard Zinn (2015). “A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present”, p.103, Routledge

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