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Howard Zinn cytaty
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Howard Zinn – amerykański historyk, w latach 1964–1988 profesor Boston University; weteran wojenny. Wikipedia  

✵ 24. Sierpień 1922 – 27. Styczeń 2010   •   Natępne imiona ஓவர்ட் சின்
Howard Zinn Fotografia
Howard Zinn: 73   Cytaty 0   Polubień

Howard Zinn słynne cytaty

„Nie chodzi mi o to, aby użalać się nad ofiarami czy obwiniać katów. Te łzy i ten gniew, gdy dotyczą przeszłości, pozbawiają nas naszej moralnej energii niezbędnej, by działać tu i teraz. Zwłaszcza, że granice nie zawsze są jasne, a w dalszej perspektywie prześladowca okazuje się również ofiarą. Na krótszą metę (a do tej pory dzieje ludzkości składały się wyłącznie z krótkich odcinków) ofiary – ogarnięte rozpaczą i skażone uciskającą je kulturą – same zwracają się przeciwko innym ofiarom.”

Howard Zinn

Ludowa historia Stanów Zjednoczonych. Od roku 1492 do dziś
Źródło: s. 38–39.

„– Powinieneś przeczytać historię USA Howarda Zinna. Ta książka cię powali.
– Jest lepszy niż Chomsky? Podobał ci się?
– Zdumiewacie mnie ludzie. Wywalacie kupę kasy na książki, ale – kurwa – nie te.
– A które są, kurwa, „te”?
– Te, od których włosy się jeżą.”

Howard Zinn

Źródło: dialog z filmu Buntownik z wyboru, autorami scenariusza są Ben Affleck i Matt Damon.

„Pogląd, że pisanie historii musi polegać po prostu na podsumowaniu dominujących w przeszłości niepowodzeń, sprawia, że historycy przyczyniają się do utrwalenia nieskończonego cyklu porażek. Jeśli historia ma być twórcza, jeśli ma przewidywać możliwą przyszłość, nie negując przy tym przeszłości, kiedy to – choćby w krótkich przebłyskach – ludzie pokazywali, że potrafią stawiać opór, jednoczyć się, a niekiedy – zwyciężać. Przypuszczam, a właściwie jedynie mam nadzieję, że naszą przyszłość można odnaleźć w przeszłości – w owych ulotnych chwilach współczucia, nie zaś w stuleciach ciągłych wojen.”

Howard Zinn

Ludowa historia Stanów Zjednoczonych. Od roku 1492 do dziś
Źródło: s. 39.

„W czasie studiów uświadomiłem sobie, że w historii Ameryki, jakiej uczą na uniwersytecie, brak walki ludzi pracy o prawa socjalne. W podręczniku historii nie było niczego o mnie i o moim – małym jeszcze wówczas – życiowym doświadczeniu. Zacząłem szukać książek o historii walk świata pracy o prawa socjalne, studiować własnymi ścieżkami, docierać do historii nieobecnej lub słabo obecnej w oficjalnym dyskursie. Doszedłem do konkluzji wydającej się dziś zupełną oczywistością: że historia, jakiej nas uczono, była tylko jedną z wersji historii; wersją opowiedzianą z perspektywy klas wyższych. Podążając tą drogą, odkrywałem, że oficjalna historia Ameryki ignorowała także zmagania innych grup o ich prawa – rodowitych Amerykanów, zwanych Indianami, czarnych, kobiet. Kilkuletnie doświadczenie mieszkania na Południu Stanów w latach 50. i 60. umocniło we mnie dysydenckie spojrzenie na ich dzieje.”

Howard Zinn

Ludowa historia Stanów Zjednoczonych. Od roku 1492 do dziś
Źródło: s. 19.

Howard Zinn: Cytaty po angielsku

“The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface.”

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Howard Zinn książka A People's History of the United States

Źródło: A People's History of the United States

“If those in charge of our society — politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television — can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power.”

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Howard Zinn

Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (1991): "American Ideology" http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/AmericanIdeology_DI.html
Kontekst: If those in charge of our society — politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television — can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.

“The cry of the poor is is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is.”

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Howard Zinn książka A People's History of the United States

Źródło: A People's History of the United States

“We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.”

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Howard Zinn

"The Old Way of Thinking" http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/Old_Way_Thinking.html, in The Progressive (November 2001)

“What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but "who is sitting in" -- and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.”

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Howard Zinn

“Any 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.”

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Howard Zinn

Źródło: Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice

“In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims.”

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Howard Zinn książka A People's History of the United States

Źródło: A People's History of the United States

“You can't be neutral on a moving train.”

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Howard Zinn

Źródło: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope.”

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Howard Zinn

Źródło: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.”

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Howard Zinn książka A People's History of the United States

Źródło: A People's History of the United States

“There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States.”

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Howard Zinn

“Tyranny is Tyranny, let it come from whom it may.”

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Howard Zinn książka A People's History of the United States

Źródło: A People's History of the United States

“Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.”

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Howard Zinn

Źródło: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“They were not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, they were absent in the Constitution and they were invisible in the new political democracy. They were the women of early America.”

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Howard Zinn książka A People's History of the United States

Źródło: A People's History of the United States

“The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

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Howard Zinn

A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, p. 270.
Źródło: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
Kontekst: To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

“That chain of relationships made me think of how connections are made--you read a book, you meet a person, you have a single experience, and your life is changed in some way. No act, therefore, however small, should be dismissed or ignored.”

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Howard Zinn

Źródło: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories, whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is.”

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Howard Zinn książka A People's History of the United States

Źródło: A People's History of the United States

“Politics is pointless if it does nothing to enhance the beauty of our lives.”

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Howard Zinn

Źródło: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation.”

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Howard Zinn

Źródło: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“At the great Washington March of 1963, the chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, John Lewis, speaking to the same enormous crowd that heard Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream," was prepared to ask the right question: "Which side is the federal government on?" That sentence was eliminated from his speech by organizers of the March to avoid offending the Kennedy Administration. But Lewis and his fellow SNCC workers had experienced, again and again, the strange passivity of the national government in the face of Southern violence, strange, considering how often this same government had been willing to intervene outside the country, often with overwhelming force.
John Lewis and SNCC had reason to be angry. John had been beaten bloody by a white mob in Montgomery as a Freedom Rider in the spring of 1961. The federal government had trusted the notoriously racist Alabama police to protect the Riders, but done nothing itself except to have FBI agents take notes. Instead of insisting that blacks and whites had a right to ride the buses together, the Kennedy Administration called for a "cooling-off period," a moratorium on Freedom Rides.”

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Howard Zinn

You Can't Be Neutral on A Moving Train (1994) Ch. 4: "My Name is Freedom": Albany, Georgia

“I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.”

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Howard Zinn książka A People's History of the United States

Źródło: A People's History of the United States (1980), Ch. 1

“The term "just war" contains an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people.”

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Howard Zinn

Terrorism and War (2002)

“To white Americans of the thirties, however, blacks North and South were invisible. Only th radicals made an attempt to break the racial barriers: Socialists, Trotskyists, Communists most of all.”

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Howard Zinn książka A People's History of the United States

Źródło: A People's History of the United States (1980), Chapter 15

“If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, nor as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country, one's fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles.”

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Howard Zinn

Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (1991): "Obligation to the State" http://www.ecn.cz/temelin/textonly/state_zin.htm

“The First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights in the United States Constitution were being violated in Albany again and again — freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the equal protection of the laws — I could count at least 30 such violations. Yet the president, sworn to uphold the Constitution, and all the agencies of the United States government at his disposal, were nowhere to be seen.”

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Howard Zinn

Describing the people who participated in the Freedom Rides to end segregation in Albany, Georgia. in You Can't Be Neutral on A Moving Train http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/oldzinn.htm (1994) Ch. 4: "My Name is Freedom": Albany, Georgia