Howard Zinn Quotes

Navalny is doing a very important thing in his segment of society. Gudkov is a doing a very important thing in his segment of society. Yabloko, or more accurately, some of the leaders of the Yabloko party, are doing a very important job in their segment of the population, people such as Schlosberg. And our organization Open Russia is also doing important work with its segment of society, because those people who are focused on us, our segment, they're not part of those other segments.

I'm fascinated by politicians, because I suspect the huge majority of them go into it full of ideas and for the best possible reasons but end up being hijacked.

Successful organizing is based on the recognition that people get organized because they, too, have a vision.

Our system of checks and balances .... The people keep the politicians from stealing too much, and the politicians keep the people from getting too crazy.

Liberal activists would often rather be right than be President.

Any man who has the brains to think and the nerve to act for the benefit of the people of the country is considered a radical by those who are content with stagnation and willing to endure disaster.

We are the party that hears the stories of people, the struggles.

The problem we have is not Democrats versus Republicans. It is a Washington cartel. I've said many times the biggest divide we have politically is not between Republicans and Democrats. It's between career politicians in both parties and the American people.

What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols.

[American Communist Party] legally exists in the U.S.A., it nominates its candidates in the elections, including Presidential elections.

We have a lot of people revolutionizing the world because they've never had to present a working model.

I have never voted. Like most people I am utterly disenchanted by politics. Like most people I regard politicians as frauds and liars and the current political system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites.

Listen, Bernie Sanders talks about how Washington is corrupt, both parties are in bed with the lobbyists and special interests. I think he's exactly right.

In your late teens and early twenties, everything is idealism. Everything should just work in black and white. That's good. You need that. I think most revolutions are started by people in their teens and twenties.

AIM in essence is a movement rather than just an organization. It is a manifestation of the desperation of our people.

People are fed up. They are fed up with what's happening in Washington. They are fed up with both parties. They are fed up with politicians who have lied to them.

The only thing for which we can combine is the underlying ideal of Socialism; justice and liberty. But it is hardly strong enough to call this ideal underlying. It is almost completely forgotten. It has been buried beneath layer after layer of doctnaire priggishness, party squabbles and half-backed progressivism until it is like a diamond hidden under a monition of dung. The job of the Socialist is to get it out again. Justice and liberty! Those are the words that have got to ring like a bugle across the world.

You know the more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best. My only solution would be to keep em both out one term and hire my good friend Henry Ford to run the whole thing, and give him a commission on what he saves us.

We need a strategy. And the goal is to bring millions of people together.

...the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are beholden to industry. They always will be. And, the American people are fooled when they think that if you can just get McGovern instead of Humphrey, or if you can get a Democrat instead of a Republican, this will be the end of our problems.

Heaven's sakes, there's only one party which I call the Property Party. It's got two wings. One is called the "Republican" and one is called "Democratic." It is the same party so it makes no difference whether a Democrat's elected or a Republican's elected. The ownership remains the same.

If there were a people consisting of gods, they would be governed democratically. So perfect a government is not suitable to men.

If Americans wish to preserve a country they will recognize, then the first step is to recognize the enemy. Public education is the enemy. The entertainment industry is the enemy. The corporate culture is the enemy. The advertising industry is the enemy. And most of the politicians in both parties are the enemy. An enemy is defined as anybody, or any organization, which is attacking the traditional beliefs of Americans.

I had been friendly with people who were in the Communist party and all the rest of the Left forces, which were oriented in the direction of mass action.

Is there anyone... who will maintain that the Party System could have been created by people particularly fond of truth?