When some people ask me about voting, they would say will you support this candidate or that candidate? I say: "I will support this candidate for one minute that I am in the voting booth. At that moment I will support A versus B, but before I am going to the voting booth, and after I leave the voting booth, I am going to concentrate on organizing people and not organizing electoral campaign."
Howard ZinnWhen I say history is a matter of life and death, I mean this: If you really don't know history, you are a victim of whatever the authorities tell you. You have no way of checking up on them. You have no way of deciding whether there is any truth in what they are saying.
Howard ZinnThe awful scenes of death and suffering we were witnessing on our television screens have been going on in other parts of the world for a long time, and only now can we begin to know what people have gone through, often as a result of our policies.
Howard ZinnIn a two-party system, if both parties ignore public opinion, there is no place voters can turn.
Howard ZinnWe cannot be secure by limiting our liberties, as some of our political leaders are demanding, but only by expanding themWe should take our example not from the military and political leaders shouting 'retaliate' and 'war' but from the doctors and nurses and firemen and policemen who have been saving lives in the midst of mayhem, whose first thoughts are not violence, but healing, and not vengeance, but compassion.
Howard ZinnDemocracy depends on people speaking out, and in times of great crisis, on people creating a commotion.
Howard ZinnMajorities can be wrong, majorities can overrule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled, we could still have slavery. 80% of the population once enslaved 20% of the population. While run by majority rule that is ok. That is very flawed notion of what democracy is. Democracy has to take into account several things - proportionate requirements of people, not just needs of the majority, but also needs of the minority. Majority, especially in societies where the media manipulates public opinion, can be totally wrong and evil. People have to act according to conscience and not by majority vote.
Howard Zinn