“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable.”
"Terror Over Tripoli" http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/Tripoli_ZR.html (1993), from The Zinn Reader (1997)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Howard Zinn 69
author and historian 1922–2010Related quotes
Source: Sermons on the First Epistle of Peter (1855), p. 7
John Pilger, "Blair has made Britain a target" 21 September 2001 http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,555452,00.html
“Killing of innocent people with no just cause is against the teaching of Islam.”
Spilling of innocent blood is against Islam – Saudi Imam https://www.pressreader.com/nigeria/daily-trust/20160330/281616714503807 (30th Mar 2016)
“Innocent people were targeted for killing. Hospitals and ambulances were attacked.”
2011, Address on interventions in Libya (March 2011)
Context: Innocent people were targeted for killing. Hospitals and ambulances were attacked. Journalists were arrested, sexually assaulted, and killed. Supplies of food and fuel were choked off. Water for hundreds of thousands of people in Misurata was shut off. Cities and towns were shelled, mosques were destroyed, and apartment buildings reduced to rubble. Military jets and helicopter gunships were unleashed upon people who had no means to defend themselves against assaults from the air.
Confronted by this brutal repression and a looming humanitarian crisis, I ordered warships into the Mediterranean. European allies declared their willingness to commit resources to stop the killing. The Libyan opposition and the Arab League appealed to the world to save lives in Libya. And so at my direction, America led an effort with our allies at the United Nations Security Council to pass a historic resolution that authorized a no-fly zone to stop the regime’s attacks from the air, and further authorized all necessary measures to protect the Libyan people.
As quoted in "Nuclear weapons unholy, Iran says" in SFGate (31 October 2003) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/10/31/MNGHJ2NFRE1.DTL.
2003
In a letter to Gauss. As quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (2004) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 361-362
Quoted
‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Aug. 19, 2007, MSNBC http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20302351/page/2/,
“There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious.”
Of Truth
Essays (1625)
Context: There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious. And therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason, why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace, and such an odious charge? Saith he, If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards men. For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood, and breach of faith, cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it shall be the last peal, to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men; it being foretold, that when Christ cometh, he shall not find faith upon the earth.