Top 100 Zinn Quotes
#1. Howard Zinn wrote in 1988, in what now seems like a lost world before so many political upheavals and technological changes arrived, "As this century draws to a close, a century packed with history, what leaps out from that history is its utter unpredictability.
Rebecca Solnit
#2. Obviously, the duty of artists is there, but it's more an indictment of the political system that someone like Zinn views artists as the seers, idealizing them as the people responsible for inspiring change.
Thom Yorke
#3. Thoughts come and go. It's impossible to stop your thoughts, but the idea is that the thoughts are kind of like waves on the ocean. That's Jon Kabat-Zinn's big analogy and that this is actually kind of diving under the waves. And you know it's kind of interesting.
Anderson Cooper
#4. Generally speaking, if people are prepared to stick their heads above the power pit, like Zinn says, and absorb what's going on around them, it makes them think.
Thom Yorke
#5. Imagine Jon Stewart if he gave a damn. He's like Howard Zinn after 12 beers.
David Swanson
#6. Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also.
Alice Walker
#7. I don't want people following Jon Kabat-Zinn. I want them following themselves.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#8. I met Howard Zinn in 1961, my first year at Spelman College in Atlanta. He was the tall, rangy, good-looking professor that many of the girls at Spelman swooned over.
Alice Walker
#9. Kabat-Zinn writes, "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." OBAMA
Will Schwalbe
#10. Until you do the inner work of learning how to see with "your eyes and your heart open," as Kabat-Zinn puts it, deep problems will persist.
Peter M. Senge
#11. But however imperfect, even repugnant, were particular policies, particular actions, there remained the purity of the ideal, represented in the theories of Karl Marx and the noble visions of many lesser thinkers and writers.
Howard Zinn
#12. Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee ...
Howard Zinn
#13. What motivates me is the desire to bring up a whole new generation of active citizens who believe in peace and social justice and will work for it.
Howard Zinn
#14. Even if you assume presidents were democratically elected they still have no right to keep secrets from the American people.
Howard Zinn
#15. Even the tiniest manifestation of mindfulness in any moment might give rise to an intuition or insight that could be hugely transforming.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#17. Too much of the education system orients students toward becoming better thinkers, but there is almost no focus on our capacity to pay attention and cultivate awareness.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#18. Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
Howard Zinn
#19. Racism was becoming more and more practical.
Howard Zinn
#20. But remember, this power of the people on top depends on the obedience of the people below. When people stop obeying, they have no power.
Howard Zinn
#21. How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?
Howard Zinn
#22. It was borrowed time anyway - the whole upper tenth of a nation living with the insouciance of a grand duc and the casualness of chorus girls.
Howard Zinn
#23. [R]emain open to not knowing, perhaps allowing yourself to come to the point of admitting, "I don't know," and then experimenting with relaxing a bit into this not knowing instead of condemning yourself for it. After all, in this moment, it may be an accurate statement of how things are for you.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#24. A willingness to embrace and work with what is lies at the core of all meditation practice.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#25. Meditation is neither shutting things out nor off. It is seeing things clearly, and deliberately positioning yourself differently in relationship to them.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#26. They have the guns, we have the poets. Therefore, we will win.
Howard Zinn
#27. We need to expose the motives of our political leaders, point out their connections to corporate power, show how huge profits are being made out of death and suffering.
Howard Zinn
#28. Note that this journey is uniquely yours, no one else's. So the path has to be your own. You cannot imitate somebody else's journey and still be true to yourself. Are you prepared to honor your uniqueness in this way?
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#29. The establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain it's control, kill us
Howard Zinn
#30. Should we not begin to redefine patriotism? We need to expand it beyond that narrow nationalism which has caused so much death and suffering. If national boundaries should not be obstacles to trade-we call it globalization-should they also not be obstacles to compassion and generosity?
Howard Zinn
#31. It is what makes us human, what distinguishes us from other animals. We can be aware of being aware.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#32. Poverty and Discontent appear in every Face (except the Countenances of the Rich) and dwell upon every Tongue." He spoke of a few men, fed by "Lust of Power, Lust of Fame, Lust of Money," who got rich during the war.
Howard Zinn
#33. I believe the American people have the capacity to create a new movement, which would change the direction of our nation from being a military power to being a peaceful nation, using our enormous wealth for human needs, here and abroad.
Howard Zinn
#34. I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own.
Howard Zinn
#35. I always emphasize the historic role of people of color in organizing and protesting to achieve justice.
Howard Zinn
#36. The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface.
Howard Zinn
#37. So, in meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#38. Rather, it is bearing in mind what is most important to you so that it is not lost or betrayed in the heat and reactivity of a particular moment.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#39. From the point of view of the meditative traditions the entire society is suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#40. Rarely are we in touch with who is doing the doing - or, put otherwise, with the world of being. To
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#41. Attention leads to connection, connection to regulation, regulation to order, and order to ease (as opposed to dis-ease), or, more colloquially, to health.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#42. Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.
Howard Zinn
#43. Anybody who is imitating somebody else, no matter who it us, is heading in the wrong direction. It is impossible to become like somebody else. Your only hope is to become more fully yourself.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#44. No new social class came to power through the door of the American revolution. The men who engineered the revolt were largely members of the colonial ruling class.
Howard Zinn
#45. To be patient is simply to be completely open to each moment, accepting it in its fullness, knowing that, like the butterfly, things can only unfold in their own time.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#46. We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.
Howard Zinn
#47. The chief problem in historical honesty is not outright lying. It is omission or de-emphasis of important data. The definition of 'important', of course, depends on one's values.
Howard Zinn
#48. Dying without actually fully living, without waking up to our lives while we have the chance, is an ongoing and significant risk.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#49. 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.
Howard Zinn
#50. The only way things will happen is if people get over the notion that they must see immediate success. If they get over that notion and persist, then they will see things happen before they even realize it.
Howard Zinn
#51. Before God and high heaven, is there a law for one man which is not a law for every other man?
Howard Zinn
#52. There is an underside to every age about which history does not often speak, because history is written from records left by the privileged.
Howard Zinn
#53. No one can listen to your body for you ... To grow and heal, you have to take responsibility for listening to it yourself.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#54. And still, even from the cells of the condemned, the message was going out: the class war was still on in that supposedly classless society, the United States.
Howard Zinn
#55. Charles Beard warned us that governments-inc luding the government of the United States-are not neutral, that they represent the dominant economic interests, and that their Constitutions are intended to serve these interests.
Howard Zinn
#56. But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is ... to tell the truth.
Howard Zinn
#57. I have come to believe that our lives can be turned in a different direction, our minds adopt a different way of thinking, by some significant, though small event. That belief can be frightening, or exhilarating, depending on whether you just contemplate it or do something with it.
Howard Zinn
#58. Perhaps ultimately, spiritual simply means experiencing wholeness and interconnectedness directly, a seeing that individuality and the totality are interwoven, that nothing is separate or extraneous. If you see in this way, then everything becomes spiritual in its deepest sense.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#59. Voluntary simplicity means going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#60. History is important. If you don't know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.
Howard Zinn
#61. What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but "who is sitting in"
and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.
Howard Zinn
#62. Discipline provides a constancy which is independent of what kind of day you had yesterday and what kind of day you anticipate today.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#63. Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren.
Howard Zinn
#64. There is an extent of riches, as well as an extreme of poverty, which, by harrowing the circles of a man's acquaintance, lessens his opportunities of general knowledge.
Howard Zinn
#65. The real meditation practice is how we live our lives from moment to moment to moment.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#66. You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#67. How we see and hold the full range of our experiences in our minds and in our hearts makes an enormous difference in the quality of this journey we are on and what it means to us. It can influence where we go, what happens, what we learn, and how we feel along the way.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#68. In war, good guys always become bad guys.
Howard Zinn
#69. There are certain ways in which I cultivate awareness, both through mindful yoga and taking care of my body and taking time to actually drop as deeply as possible into stillness, into whatever is unfolding in the present moment.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#70. Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a 'war on terrorism' is a contradiction in terms.
Howard Zinn
#71. Carl Jung put it this way: "The attainment of wholeness requires one to stake one's whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises." With
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#72. The historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interest, where any chosen emphasis supports some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial, or national or sexual.
Howard Zinn
#73. Perhaps the most "spiritual" thing any of us can do is simply to look through our own eyes, see with eyes of wholeness, and act with integrity and kindness.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#74. Mindfulness has been called the heart of Buddhist meditation.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#75. People of the United States have to really consider whether they want to be an empire. Sweden is not worried about terrorism. New Zealand is not worried about terrorism. Holland is not worried about terrorism. Why not be a modest little country without all of these enormous ambitions?
Howard Zinn
#76. Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.
Howard Zinn
#77. When in all the nations of the world the rule of law is the darling of the leaders and the plague of the people, we ought to begin to recognize this.
Howard Zinn
#78. Congressman Ryan is a strong advocate for greater mindfulness in health care as well as in other important areas such as education, the military, and criminal justice. In his book, he makes a very strong case for why we need greater mindfulness in these and other areas of our society.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#79. Missing from such histories are the countless small actions of unknown people that led up to those great moments. When we understand this, we can see that the tiniest acts of protest in which we engage may become the invisible roots of social change.
Howard Zinn
#80. Meditation is not so concerned with how much thinking is going on as it is with how much room you are making for it to take place within the field of your awareness from one moment to the next.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#81. George Orwell said, "Whoever controls the past controls the future," by which he meant that history is incredibly important in shaping the world view of the next generation of people.
Howard Zinn
#82. All the suffering, stress, and addiction comes from not realizing you already are what you are looking for.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#83. When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war.
Howard Zinn
#84. One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.
Howard Zinn
#85. You call this progress, because you have motor cars and telephones and flying machines and a thousand potions to make you smell better? And people sleeping on the streets?
Howard Zinn
#87. Sometimes it's a short step from banning to burning.
Howard Zinn
#88. Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#89. Meditation had never been tried before in a medical center, so we had no idea whether mainstream Americans would accept a clinic whose foundation was intensive training in meditative discipline.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#90. What does happen as we intentionally pay attention to our breathing is that we realize pretty quickly that we are
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#91. He estimates that perhaps 250,000 slaves were imported illegally before the Civil War.
Howard Zinn
#92. When experience is viewed in a certain way, it presents nothing but doorways into the soul.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#93. Terrorism and war have something in common. They both involve the killing of innocent people to achieve what the killers believe is a good end.
Howard Zinn
#94. The resources of a university, of a college, should not be wasted in merely academic pursuits.
Howard Zinn
#95. But slave importation became illegal in 1808.
Howard Zinn
#96. Group meditation according to Jon Kabat
Howard Zinn
#97. Through it all, we attempt to bring balance to the present moment,
understanding that in patience lies wisdom,
knowing that what will come next will be determined in large measure by how we are now.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#98. The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States.
Howard Zinn
#99. You are whole and also part of larger and larger circles of wholeness you many not even know about. You are never alone. And you already belong. You belong to humanity. You belong to life. You belong to this moment, this breath.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#100. The cry of the poor is is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is.
Howard Zinn
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