Howard Zinn: Champion Of Hope

Howard Zinn

Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn

How Zinn's career as a WWII bombardier converted him from violence to peace.

http://warisacrime.org/node/54059

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is history not only of cruelty, but of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places- and there have been so many- where people have behaved magnificently, this give us the energy to act...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 humans beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." Howard Zinn

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"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”  

"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/04/merton-best-imposed-as-norm-becomes.html