I have no regrets about my political activity, only that I sometimes got carried away with it and didn't find the right balance between obligations to my family and my need to be involved in social movements.
Howard ZinnI will try not to overlook the cruelties that victims inflict on one another as they are jammed together in the boxcars of the system. I donโt want to romanticize them. But I do remember (in rough paraphrase) a statement I once read: โThe cry of the poor is not always just, but if you donโt listen to it, you will never know what justice is.
Howard ZinnAny humane and reasonable person must conclude that if the ends, however desireable, are uncertain and the means are horrible and certain, these means must not be employed.
Howard ZinnControl in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factorites, whose lives are filled qith cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is. And so, the schools, the churches, the popular literature taught that to be rich was a sign of superiority, to be poor a sign of personal failure, and that the only way upward for a poor person was to climb into the ranks of the rich by extraordinary effort and extraordinary luck.
Howard Zinn