History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the government tells you. But knowing a bit of history--while it would not absolutely prove the government was lying in a given instance--might make you skeptical, lead you to ask questions, make it more likely that you would find out the truth.

The meaning ... of a writer will be found not just in what he intends to say, or what he does literally say, but in the effect of his writing on living beings.

[W]e're taught that if one person kills another person, that is murder; but if a government kills a hundred thousand persons, that is patriotism.

I suggest that if you know history, then you might not be so easily fooled by the government when it tells you you must go to war for this or that reason -that history is a protective armor against being misled.

We better rethink the position of the United States in the world and whether we want to be an empire. Being an empire puts all of us in jeopardy. The American Empire, while it was just wreaking havoc on other nations, didn't bother us.

[...] There is none that disperses its control more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media - none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty.

The really critical thing isn't who's sitting in he White House, but who is sitting in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories. Who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating ? - those are the things that determine what happens.