Extended excerpt [Nonfiction. Full paragraph cited.]:

“History can have another effect, however. Like memory, it can liberate us when the present seems an irrevocable fact of nature. Memory can remind us of possibilities that we have forgotten, and history can suggest to us alternatives that we would never otherwise consider. It can both warn and inspire. It can warn us that it is possible for a whole nation to be brainwashed, or “enlightened” and “educated” people to commit genocide, for a “democratic” country to maintain slavery, for oppressed to turn into oppressors, for “socialism” to be tyrannical and “liberalism” to be imperialist, for whole peoples to be led to war like sheep. It can also show us that apparently powerless underlings can defeat their rulers, that men (for at least most moments of time) can live like brothers, that men can make incredible sacrifices on behalf of a cause.” 

Source link: The Politics of History (1970|2nd edition, 2013 eBookIt) online via Scribd [subscription service]: https://www.scribd.com/read/310536703/The-Politics-of-History#t_search-menu_989237

Extended excerpt [History text. Chapter one: ‘Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress’.]:

“If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past’s fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.” (p. 38)

Source link: A People’s History of the United States (1970|2nd edition, 2013 eBookIt) online via Scribd [subscription service]: https://www.scribd.com/read/287366316/A-People-s-History-of-the-United-States#t_search-menu_741304

Extended excerpt [First lines of essay]: “I can understand pessimism, but I don’t believe in it. It’s not simply a matter of faith, but of historical evidence. Not overwhelming evidence, just enough to give hope, because for hope we don’t need certainty, only possibility. Which (despite all those confident statements that “history shows…” and “history proves…”) is all history can offer us.”

Source note: Zinn’s “Failure to Quit” essay can also be found in his book Failure to Quit: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian.

Source link: “Failure to Quit” (1990|Repost online 13 September 2016) online via HowardZinn.org: https://www.howardzinn.org/failure-to-quit/

Extended excerpt [Nonfiction – Chapter One: ‘Introduction: American Ideology’]:

“We can reasonably conclude that how we think is not just mildly interesting, not just a subject for intellectual debate, but a matter of life and death.

If those in charge of our society – politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television – can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.” (p. 2)

Source: Library – Declarations of Independence: Cross Examining American Ideology (1990) International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 0-06-016573-5

Extended excerpt [Nonfiction]:

“I am suggesting that “responsibility” in history can only have meaning in immediate activity. It is an old and useless game among historians to decide today whether Caesar was good or bad, Napoleon progressive or reactionary, Roosevelt a reformer or a revolutionist. In a recounting of past crimes, it is senseless to ask: Who was guilty then? unless it leads directly to: What is our responsibility now?” (p. 374)

Source link: The Politics of History (1970|2nd edition, 2013 eBookIt) online via Scribd [subscription service]: https://www.scribd.com/read/310536703/The-Politics-of-History

Extended excerpt [Nonfiction]:

“Our historical experience is limited, however, and while it suggests some of the things that are possible, it has not even begun to exhaust the total range of possibility. Because of the limits of our imagination, tyrannized as we are by the past, we find it hard to accept that there is a universe of tricks still to be played that has barely been touched in all of human history. In other words, the past suggests what can be, not what must be. It shows not all of what is necessary, but some of what is possible. The more we understand the limitations of history, the more it can be liberating rather than oppressive.” (p. 370)

Source link: The Politics of History (1970|2nd edition, 2013 eBookIt) online via Scribd [subscription service]: https://www.scribd.com/read/310536703/The-Politics-of-History#t_search-menu_305043

Extended excerpt [Non-fiction – Memoir]:

“And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” (p. 208)

Source: Library – You Can’t be Neutral on a Moving Train (1994) International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 0-8070-7058-0

Extended excerpt  [Non-fiction – Memoir]:

“As I began to realize, no pitifully small picket line, no poorly attended meeting, no tossing out of an idea to an audience or even to an individual should be scorned as insignificant. The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Those special people who speak out in such a way as to shake up not only the self-assurance of their enemies, but the complacency of their friends, are precious catalysts for change.” (p. 33)

Source: Library – You Can’t be Neutral on a Moving Train (1994) International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 0-8070-7058-0

Extended excerpt [Essay]:

“Modern technology has outdistanced the Bible. “An eye for an eye” has become a hundred eyes for an eye, a hundred babies for a baby. The tough-guy columnists and anonymous editorial writers (there are a few courageous exceptions) who defended this, tried to wrap their moral nakedness in the American flag. But it dishonors the flag to wave it proudly over the killing of a college student, or a child sleeping in a crib.

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable. If the purpose is to stop terrorism, even the supporters of the bombing say it won’t work; if the purpose is to gain respect for the United States, the result is the opposite: all over the world there is anger and indignation at Reagan’s mindless, pointless, soulless violence. We have had presidents just as violent. We have rarely had one so full of hypocritical pieties about “the right to life.” (pp. 118-119)

Source: Library – Failure to Quit: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian (1992) International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 1-56751-013-2

Extended excerpt [Final lines of essay]:

“Historically, government, whether in the hands of Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, has failed its responsibilities, until forced to by direct action: sit-ins and Freedom Rides for the rights of black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war.

Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.”

Source link: “Election Madness” (8 April 2008) online via The Progressive: https://progressive.org/magazine/election-madness/