Ali

“Democracy, as a form of government, has the advantage of making everybody a participant in war... This is one of the strongest reasons for expecting democracy to survive.”
― Bertrand Russell

“You didn't come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.”
― Alan W. Watts, Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown

“The religious element in patriotism is reinforced by education, especially by a knowledge of the history and literature of one’s own country, provided it is not accompanied by much knowledge of the history and literature of other countries.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight

“History is the memory of states,' wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmen's policies. From his standpoint, the 'peace' that Europe had before the French Revolution was 'restored' by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation - a world not restored but disintegrated.

My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.”
― Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present