Howard Zinn Quotes

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders . . . . and millions have been killed because of this obedience . . . .

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.

Today, whether it is a student who holds a sit-in to get the army recruiters off his campus, or the mother of a dead soldier who refuses to leave the front gate of the president's ranch, we continue to be saved by brave people who risk ridicule and rejection but end up turning huge tides of public opinion in the direction of righteousness. We owe them enormous debts of gratitude. It is not easy to stand up for what is right, especially when everyone else is afraid to leave the comfortable path of conformity.

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.

In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist.

Civil disobedience is not only the natural right of a people, especially when they have no effective voice in their own Government, but that it is also a substitute for violence or armed rebellion.

Civil disobedience is not something outside the realm of democracy. Democracy requires civil disobedience. Without civil disobedience democracy does not exist.

There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.

Should I abide by the rules until they're changed, or help speed the change by breaking them?

Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

Some laws are wrong, and we have an obligation to speak out against those laws wherever they are.

Better still - your history has shown how powerful a moral catharsis expressed through popular resistance to injustice can sometimes be; I have in mind the grassroots opposition to the Vietnam War.

There's a tradition in the history of dissent in authoritarian countries of a certain kind of dissident, and their form of dissent is to live their lives as normally as possible.

I shall continue to be an impossible person so long as those who are now possible remain possible.

These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest

It takes a lot of punishment to be able to do anything to change the social order.

Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more.

I talk a lot about justice. I'm about it. I'm also about civil disobedience.

The civil rights and antiwar movements taught Americans to question authority.

Each of us should choose which course of action we must take; education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes, but let it not be said that we did nothing.

The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all.

As long as the superstition that people should obey unjust laws exists, so long will slavery exist

If you want to challenge the system, don't go to bed with it.

Sometimes things need to get really bad before they can ever get better. Really bad can become untenable if enough people get sick of it. That was a big thing about why I ended up taking part in that rally [against police brutality] and ended up voicing my opinion and declaring what side I was standing on.

Civil disobedience is the only nonviolent escape from the soul-destroying heat of violence.