The Roman Empire came to an end, but the Roman people didn’t come to an end, so I see the American Empire coming to an end just as other empires have come to an end.
How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?
There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at critical points to create a power that governments cannot suppress.
We better rethink the position of the United States in the world and whether we want to be an empire. Being an empire puts all of us in jeopardy. The American Empire, while it was just wreaking havoc on other nations, didn’t bother us.
Since war itself is the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on terrorism is profoundly self-contradictory.
Will Iraq be a democracy? The question is, ‘Will America be a democracy?’
The awful scenes of death and suffering we were witnessing on our television screens have been going on in other parts of the world for a long time, and only now can we begin to know what people have gone through, often as a result of our policies.
I try to tell each group that it is not alone, and that the very people who are disheartened by the absence of a national movement are themselves proof of the potential for such a movement.
I always emphasize the historic role of people of color in organizing and protesting to achieve justice.
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.
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.
Use the Day of Atonement not to pray for the dead but to act for the living, to rescue those about to die.
It was an old lesson learned by governments: that war solves problems of control.
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.
Diverse audiences can be just as misled as homogenous audiences.
I am not an absolute pacifist, because I can’t rule out the possibility that under some, carefully defined circumstances, some degree of violence may be justified, if it is focused directly at a great evil.
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.
If you don’t know history, it is as if you were born yesterday.
The future is an infinite succession of presents.
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.