Howard Zinn Quotes About Giving

Quotes about: Giving

• To be hopeful in bad times is based on the fact that human history is not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand Utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

  Howard Zinn

  Hope, Kindness, Future

• 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, just enough to give HOPE, because for hope we don't need certainty, only POSSIBILITY.

  Howard Zinn

  Believe, Giving, Historical

  Howard Zinn (2011). “The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy”, p.709, Seven Stories Press

• What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

  Howard Zinn

  Future, People, Giving

  Howard Zinn (2006). “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress”, p.270, City Lights Publishers

• The establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain it's control, kill us

  Howard Zinn

  Giving, Rewards, Establishment

• 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.

• The terrorism of the suicide bomber and the terrorism of aerial bombardment are indeed morally equivalent. To say otherwise (as either side might) is to give one moral superiority over the other, and thus serve to perpetuate the horrors of our time.

  Howard Zinn

  Suicide, Giving, Bombers

  "Letters: On Terror", www.nytimes.com. August 19, 2007.

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

  Howard Zinn

  Country, War, Taken

• I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.

  Howard Zinn

  Giving Up, Winning, Games

  Howard Zinn (2013). “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress”, p.267, City Lights Books

• The problem of giving health care to everybody cannot be solved so long as we're spending huge sums of money for war. Already we have a very wasteful healthcare system, the most wasteful healthcare system in the world. I mean, we spend the most money and still have 40 million people without insurance. Compare us to Cuba. Cuba is our enemy, run by a dictator, Fidel Castro. But people in Cuba get health care at least equal to that of the United States - with very scarce resources. So I think this issue is the most important domestic issue.

  Howard Zinn

  Running, War, Mean

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

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