Howard Zinn Quotes

In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.

In a world of global dependencies with no corresponding global polity and few tools of global justice, the rich of the world are free to pursue their own interests while paying no attention to the rest.

There are two Americas. One which influences government and economic policy and the other which must live with the results.

Until economic freedom is attained for everybody, there can be no real freedom for anybody.

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

Liberty is impossible if 36 thousand families at the top of the economic pyramid get as much income as 12 million families at the bottom.

Rising inequality isn’t about who has the knowledge; it’s about who has the power.

Income inequity has to be addressed.

What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?

Remember, until the 1970s, the spread of democracy has always been accompanied by the decline of inequality. The more democratic our societies have been, the more equal they have been becoming. Now we have the reverse tendency. The spread of democracy now is very much accompanied by the increase in inequality.

Social injustice is what puts Scotland at its greatest disadvantage, and restoring the 50p tax rate will start to fight that.

For a free country to continue thriving, there have to be regular reforms, because any society, any economy that stays in place, you're going to see repeated attempts to exploit the openings for twisting policy to the advantage of those who already have wealth and power.

It would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying them.

We need wealthy dogs off the seats of power. They're taking us back to feudalism and I really don't want that. But I'm very far from being a socialist.

Well, first of all, I think that a lot of the voters who are voting for the tea party candidates have really good impulses. That is, they believe that for years and years and years, the people with wealth and power or government power have done well and ordinary people have not. That's true.

The issue of wealth inequality is ... the great moral issue of our time.

The Negro today perhaps has more political power than ever before and he is worse off than ever before. It is not votes but dollars that count in this civilization.

Why did the world ever become so unequal?

No one should have more than five times the wealth of the poorest person.

There is another world out there, the existence of which the Court, I suspect, either chooses to ignore or fears to recognize. And so the cancer of poverty will continue to grow.

Hunger, the inseparable companion of the poor, is the offspring of the unequal distribution of the wealth and the injustices in this world. The rich do not know hunger.

The poor will never cease out of the land.

There is not enough wealth in the cities to redistribute it from those who are wealthy to those who are poor.

Who takes the blame: the leader who talks of poverty but lives in luxury, or the poor who choose a leader of that type?

If work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.