Howard Zinn Quotes

In poor countries, the rich and powerful crush the poor and powerless.

The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are so seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them

An issue between a people and a class

As long as the working-people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington to give them work, so long they will not get it. So long as they tramp the streets, whose stones they lay, whose filth they clean, whose sewers they dig, yet upon which they must not stand too long lest the policeman bid them "move on"; as long as they go from factory to factory, begging for the opportunity to be a slave, receiving the insults of bosses and foremen, getting the old "no," the old shake of the head, in these factories they built, whose machines they wrought; so long as they consent to herd like cattle, in the cities, driven year after year, more and more, off the mortgaged land, the land they cleared, fertilized, cultivated, rendered of value; so long as they stand shivering, gazing thro' plate glass windows at overcoats, which they made, but cannot buy, starving in the midst of food they produced but cannot have; so long as they continue to do these things vaguely relying upon some power outside themselves, be it god, or priest, or politician, or employer, or charitable society, to remedy matters, so long deliverance will be delayed.

As recognized since ancient times, the coexistence of very rich and very poor leads to two possibilities, neither a happy one. The rich can rule alone, disenfranchising or even enslaving the poor, or the poor can rise up and confiscate the wealth of the rich.

The great have private feelings of their own, to which the interests of humanity and justice must curtsy. Their interests are so far from being the same as those of the community, that they are in direct and necessary opposition to them; their power is at the expense of OUR weakness; their riches of OUR poverty; their pride of OUR degradation; their splendour of OUR wretchedness; their tyranny of OUR servitude.

It is impossible for one class to appreciate the wrongs of another.

Sexism, like racism, goes with us into the next century. I see class warfare as overshadowing both.

The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together.

The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor.

Victorian values meant brutalizing people who were often poor.

As people get more desperate, history suggests that they're not going to rise in a mighty proletarian tidal wave and wash away their oppressors. They're gonna turn on each other.

What are your masses [of humanity] but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?

A heavy aristocracy and corruption are two bridles in the mouths of a people which will prevent them from making any effectual efforts against their masters.

Social injustice is such a familiar phenomenon ... that it is readily regarded as something natural, even by its victims.

Man has set man against man, Washed against unwashed.

The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose; while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose, especially their lives.

It is assumed that the daughters of the poor are for the use of the rich. They assume that we’re their property.

Most of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and have nots.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

What the poor did to the poor was the business of the poor, not the business of the proper people who ran the city.

I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.

All down history, nine-tenths of mankind have been grinding corn for the remaining one-tenth, been paid with the husks, and bidden to thank God they had the husks.

Coalitions are but the unjust subjection of one people to another.

There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, eat a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets.