Howard Zinn Quotes

When a group of people get together, it's collective power. You know that you're doing it for the good.

Whether you want to do a letter-writing campaign or a march or start a social media hashtag - whatever it is - know that there are people out there that are thinking exactly like you're thinking and are also afraid to take that next and very important step.

It is wonderful to be in solidarity with another big group of people.

It is time to stop waiting for someone to save us. It is time to face the truth of our situation - that we're all in this together, that we all have a voice - and figure out how to mobilize the hearts and minds of everyone in our workplaces and communities.

And who will join this standing up and the ones who stood without sweet company will sing and sing back into the mountains and if necessary even under the sea: we are the ones we have been waiting for.

When unique voices are united in a common cause, they make history.

The great news is that that sort of group of people and that sort of sensibility is beginning to become more active again. And I think partly it just has to do with the time. It has to do with the culture of resistance. The necessity is for us to pull together and to speak up and to make work and be visible.

I know one thing: that you can do a lot of things but if you don't educate people into conscious anarchism it gets frittered away.

It means a great deal to those who are oppressed to know that they are not alone. And never let anyone tell you that what you are doing is insignificant.

Ordinary people can bring about change.

I feel very inspired right now because I know there are a lot of people out there who are really scared but I feel this great sense of togetherness and people coming together and saying, "I got your back."

There are things that you can do on an individual level, even as you continue to fight oppression systemically, that make things a little bit better for an identifiable group.

It's really awful, the rhetoric that's becoming part of the national discourse, but when it has such an ugly headline - that's what activated a group of people that was otherwise complacent to go, "Hey, I'm going down to the airport, and I'm going to hold hands in solidarity around Muslims in the arrival section of the airport." That's why I've made a choice to be so public about my position.

I think something happens only when people find that they are moved with others, find themselves linked or allied in new ways, showing up or speaking out in ways that resonate with one another. That resonating can be very compelling and lead to moving and speaking more emphatically and with sharper focus.

People may say 'What can I do? I'm only one person.' But we've proven that when we come together demonstrate, and speak our piece, there is no way the power structure can avoid being attentive.

There is a power that can be created out of pent-up indignation, courage, and the inspiration of a common cause, and that if enough people put their minds and bodies into that cause, they can win. It is a phenomenon recorded again and against in the history of popular movements against injustice all over the world.

My own view - and I'm very open to hearing other perspectives - is that this movement-building needs to begin at home, in local communities. It isn't about trying to launch a brand new national party overnight. It's about people in communities coming together across lines of difference, bringing with them their movements, their families, and coming together and saying, "How can we together build a movement of movements here at home? What would that look like? What do we want to do right here in our communities?"

It's tougher for me. But I don't think that's imperative to me starting a new movement, or revive an old movement, to help people.

I had too many businesses that are frivolous. I have enough. What interests me most is under-served communities. We need a new style of empowering these people, and new approaches.

People in communion liberate each other.

The few have not strength to achieve great changes unaided; the many have not wisdom to be moved by truth unmixed.

When millions of people stand up and fight...they win.

What most people want, I guess? I want the individual to know that if we unite, we are not powerless.

You can be as earnest and ridiculous as you need to be, if you don't attempt it in isolation. The ridiculously earnest are known to travel in groups. And they are known to change the world.

Every revolution begins as consciousness because some group of people has to imagine change.