498 Quotes by Howard Zinn

Another black woman, Margaret Wright, said she was not fighting for equality with men if it meant equality in the world of killing, the world of competition. "I don't want to compete on no damned exploitative level. I don't want to exploit nobody. . . . I want the right to be black and me. . . .

In January 1943, there appeared in a Negro newspaper this "Draftee's Prayer":Dear Lord, todayI go to war:To fight, to die, Tell me what for?Dear Lord, I'll fight, I do not fear, Germans or Japs;My fears are here.America!

So, Son, instead of crying, be strong, so as to be able to comfort your mother . . . take her for a long walk in the quiet country, gathering wild flowers here and there. . . . But remember always, Dante, in the play of happiness, don't you use all for yourself only. . . . help the persecuted and the victim because they are your better friends. . . . In this struggle of life you will find more and love and you will be loved.

I could only think one troubling thought: the police, the state, did the bidding of the holders of great wealth. How much freedom of speech and freedom of assembly you had depended on what class you were in.

A jury is always a more orthodox body than any defendant brought before it; for blacks it is usually a whiter group, for poor people, a more prosperous group...Another lesson about the justice system: the way the judge charges the jury inevitably pushes them one way or the other, limits their independent judgment.

I never cared much for machinery. I could not see into their complications or feel interested in them. . . In sweet June weather I would lean far out of the window, and try not to hear the unceasing clash of sound inside.

An Ashinabe "spring poem" translated by Gerald Vizenor:as my eyes look across the prairiei feel the summerin the spring

History is important. If you don't know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.

Tyranny is Tyranny, let it come from whom it may.