The mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction-so tremblingly respectful of states and statesmen and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people's movements-that we need some counterforce to avoid being crushed into submission.

In a two-party system, if both parties ignore public opinion, there is no place voters can turn.

George Orwell said, "Whoever controls the past controls the future," by which he meant that history is incredibly important in shaping the world view of the next generation of people.

Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a 'war on terrorism' is a contradiction in terms.

Where progress has been made, wherever any kind of injustice has been overturned, it’s been because people acted as citizens, and not as politicians. They didn’t just moan. They worked, they acted, they organized, they rioted if necessary to bring their situation to the attention of people in power. And that’s what we have to do today.

They have the guns, we have the poets. Therefore, we will win.

If you want to end terrorism, you have to stop being terrorists