Howard Zinn Quotes

This is a country for, of, and by the people not for, of, and by the government. If we turn it over to them we cannot complain about what they're doing because this is a natural course of men and we have to hold their feet to the fire.

If we advert to the nature of republican government, we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people.

it is the people who control the Government, not the Government the people.

The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn't represent the people. It controls them.

The Government is a servant and never should be anything but a servant. The moment the people become adjuncts to government, then the law of retribution begins to work, for such a relation is unnatural, immoral, and inhuman.

All of us should remember that the federal government is not some mysterious institution comprised of buildings, files and paper. The people are the government. What we create we ought to be able to control.

My movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt - now, when I say "corrupt," I'm talking about totally corrupt - political establishment, with a new government controlled by you, the American people.

Opposition, n. In politics the party that prevents the Government from running amok by hamstringing it.

We the people tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us.

Our whole system of government is based on "We the people," but if we the people don't pay attention to what's going on, we have no right to bellyache or squawk when things go wrong.

The greater the share the people have in government, the less liberty, civil or religious, does a nation enjoy.

It is true that liberty is not free, nor is it easy. But tyranny - even varying degrees of it - is much more difficult, and much more expensive. The time has come to rein in the federal government, put it on a crash diet, and let the people keep their money and their liberty.

No government has ever been beneficent when the attitude of government was that it was taking care of the people. The only freedom consists in the people taking care of the government.

Government can't do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you.

What are we going to do if citizens are disarmed, and the government doesn't obey its own laws?

We are a nation that has a government - not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the earth. Our government has no power except that granted to it by the people It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

In effect the people were present through their representatives, and were themselves, step by step and point by point, acting in the conduct of public affairs. No longer merely an ultimate check on government, they were in some sense the government.

It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments.

Almost all the worlds' constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which We the People tell the government what it is allowed to do. We the People are free.

In our democracy officers of the government are the servants, and never the masters of the people.

No government demands so much from the citizens as democracy and none gives back so much.

The government and the people are under a moral necessity of acting together; a free press compels them to bend to one another.

What the public does is not to express its opinions but to align itself for or against a proposal. If that theory is accepted, we must abandon the notion that democratic government can be the direct expression of the will of the people. We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead, we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilizations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern. We must say that the popular will does not direct continuously but that it intervenes occasionally.

We really are at the crossroads and [disarmament] will happen if people of goodwill all over the world raise their voices and take action to let the governments of the world know that’s what they want.