Howard Zinn Quotes

In raising a people from slavery to freedom, you have called them to act on a new theatre; and it is a necessary part of your business, to teach them how to perform their parts.

I believe education is the great equalizer.

Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.

We should all have the opportunity to at least get a basic education and feel that you are worthy of something in life.

Education ... is the great equalizer of the conditions of men—the balance wheel of the social machinery.

The son of the coarsest man in the country, if he attends to his learning may become President.

Give education and knowledge to the common people.

Everything hinges on education. Without it, you can't advocate for proper health care, for housing, for a civil rights bill that ensures your rights.

What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.

I believe that the way to justice is education.

Great law schools like Northwestern are here to expand the minds of their students, to allow them to achieve their personal goals, to enable them to contribute, to give back in ways that they could not without the education they receive here, and to help them make the greatest country in the world just a little more accessible, a little fairer.

Reading has helped motivate me to become a spokesperson for programs like the WrestleMania Reading Challenge. It has motivated me to become more involved in my community and to keep learning new things.

For sure, I think that's the mission in all life, whether it's basketball, being a doctor, building a company. I think we take social justice and the lessons we're learning now, that everybody is learning.

There are lots of great educationalists out there who really care about social mobility.

Your job is to meet the right people and read the right books.

The part of my education that has had the deepest influence wasn't any particular essay or even a specific class, it was how I was able to apply everything I learned in the library to certain situations in my life. . . The library takes me away from my everyday life and allows me to see other places and learn to understand other people unlike myself.

I was very fortunate to be able to go to school and university, because many people our age couldn't complete school. This gift of education must be used in whatever ways we can to uplift the people.

These people marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education and now we've got these knuckleheads walking round.

Whatever we may say against collections, which present authors in a disjointed form, they nevertheless bring about many excellent results. We are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merits. Do we not mark in a book passages which seem to have a direct reference to ourselves? Young people especially, who have failed in acquiring a complete cultivation of mind, are roused in a praiseworthy way by brilliant passages.

Education could be a great vehicle for gender equity. It allows people to see what your rights are by reading. Quite often women, for example, may have rights that they are not in the position to actually make use of.

I definitely believe in the power of education. I believe the more people know, the more they are able to do what they can.

I write books to change the world. Perhaps I can only change one little piece of that world. But if I can empower teachers and good citizens to give these children, who are the poorest of the poor, the same opportunity we give our own kids, then I'll feel my life has been worth it.

These people in Mississippi State, they are not "down"; all they need is a chance. And I am determined to give my part not for what the Movement can do for me, but what I can do for the Movement to bring about a change in the State of Mississippi.

My kids have lived experiences that could have never been duplicated otherwise. That's one thing about people who get involved in activism, you live so many experiences that otherwise they wouldn't be there. This is why peoples' lives are so enriched.

What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.