498 Quotes by Howard Zinn

I've always resented the smug statements of politicians, media commentators, corporate executives, who talked of how, in America, if you worked hard, you would become rich. The meaning of that was, if you were poor, it was because you hadn't worked hard enough. I knew this was a lie—about my father, and millions of others: men and women who worked harder than anyone.

King's stress on love and nonviolence was powerfully effective in building a sympathetic following throughout the nation, among whites as well as blacks.

I have a little boy at home,A pretty little son;I think sometimes the world is mineIn him, my only one. . . 'Ere dawn my labor drives me forth;Tis night when I am free;A stranger am I to my child;And stranger my child to me. . . .

Slaves hung on determinedly to their selves, to their love of family, their wholeness. A shoemaker on the South Carolina Sea Islands expressed in his own way: "I'se lost an arm, but it hasn't gone out of my brains.

We're coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand moreWe leave our homes and firesides with bleeding hearts and soreSince poverty has been our crime, we bow to thy decree;We are the poor and have no wealth to purchase liberty.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal , that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Slavery was immensely profitable to some masters. James Madison told a British visitor shortly after the American Revolution that he could make 257 dollars on every (black slave) in a year, and spend only 12 or 13 dollars on his keep.

Whatever we poor men may not have, we have free speech, and no one can take it from us.

Being fired has some of the advantages of dying without its supreme disadvantages. People say extra-nice things about you, and you get to hear them.