Howard Zinn Quotes

Movements are not radical. Movements are the American way. A small group of abolitionists writing and speaking eventually led to the end of slavery. A few stirred-up women brought about women's voting. The Populist movement, the Progressive movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the women's movement - the examples go on and on of 'little people' getting together and telling the truth about their lives. They made our government act.

Ordinary people - churches, too - have a role to force politicians to respond. Governments are not impressed with theories, but governments are impressed with people who change their minds about things.

Democracy comes alive not when government does anything, because government cannot be depended on to rectify serious injustices. It comes alive when people organize and do something about it.

The center of gravity has shifted from the courts to community action.

The idea of protest organizing, as summarized by community organizer Saul Alinsky, is that if we put enough pressure on the government, it will do things to help people. We don't realize that that kind of organizing worked only when the government was very strong, when the West ruled the world, relatively speaking. But with globalization and the weakening of the nation-state, that kind of organizing doesn't work.

If scientists and scholars were to become "collectively self-organised and consciously activist" today, they would probably devote themselves to service to state and private power. Those who have different goals should (and do) become organized and activist.

The Black Lives Matter movement, the various Occupy movements in Spain and the rest of Europe, in this country, and elsewhere serve as an example of what can be done, and how strong the voices for positive change and truly democratic progress can be.

The really critical thing isn't who's sitting in he White House, but who is sitting in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories. Who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating ? - those are the things that determine what happens.

When we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress.

Individual struggles merge into larger social movements.

We must always refill and ensure there is a critical mass of leaders and activists committed to nonviolence and racial and economic justice who will keep seeding and building transforming movements.

Activism could be defined as activities engaged in by individuals to change there of others situation.

You have to try to build support around causes. It is uniting to campaign on a single issue, and it is never just a single issue; it's always more than that.

Change never comes from the White House. It comes from your house and my house.

Collective action is a means of power, a means by which individuals can more fully realize their individual values.

Being part of social movements like Black Lives Matter or organizations like NAACP, or any group representing a cause, gives you more resources, knowledge, and power. They can help you use your voice.

Our Revolution has been the keeper of the flame doing the vital work of building a grassroots movement that leverages the people's agenda.

What you learn from my life is, first of all, that anybody can be a leader. You can be a leader. I wasn't born that way - I developed it, I worked at it. And also that the grassroots can organize and take on all the powers that be and defeat them. That is the lesson.

The better we understand how identities and power work together from one context to another, the less likely our movements for change are to fracture.

It's the people who are doing the nonviolent organizing at the grassroots that make me think there's still hope.

The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn't bend on its own.

I think we're at a time where people just want to join together and cause change. People don't want to live like this any more.

In the words of Frederick Douglas, power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will. We must be that demand. We are the ones we've been waiting for.

The movement for equality and justice can only be a success if it has both a mass and militant character; the barriers to be overcome require both.

If democracy were to be given any meaning, if it were to go beyond the limits of capitalism and nationalism, this would not come, if history were any guide, from the top. It would come through citizen's movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking, boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they needed.