a few nice quotes

"It is one of the ironies of the American system that the closer we get to matters of life and death--that is, to questions of war and peace--the less does democracy function."
--Howard Zinn Disobedience and Democracy pg 62

"It is very hard, in the comfortable environment of middle-class America, to discard the notion that everything will be better if we don't have the disturbance of civil disobedience, if we confine ourselves to voting, writing letters to our Congressmen, speaking our minds politely. But those outside are not so comfortable. Most people in the world are hungry, have no decent place to sleep, no doctor when they are sick; and some are fleeing from attacking airplanes. Somehow, we must transcend our own tight, air-conditioned chambers and begin to feel their plight, their needs. It may become evident that, despite our wealth, we can have no real peace until they do. We might then join them in battering at the complacency of those who guard a false "order," with that healthy commotion that has always attended the growth of justice."
--Howard Zinn Disobedience and Democracy pg 123-124

"I wish my countrymen to consider, that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the world...The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free. They are the lovers of law and order who observe the law when the government breaks it...I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour. No matter how valuable law may be to protect your property, even to keep soul and body together, if it do not keep you and humanity together." Henry Thoreau Slavery in Massachusetts


"Surely no rational or realistic person will discount the possibility that the United States might suddenly resort to nuclear weapons. Those who retain the instinct for survival, not to speak of a minimal concern for their fellow man, will seek ways to act before rather than after the event." Noam Chomsky