No More Wars - Howard Zinn

"The abolition of war is not easy; utopian perhaps, but something that has to be put on the agenda of the human race at this point in history. However long it takes to accomplish, it has to be on the agenda, and people have to start talking about it."

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"The United States has often been considered, and certainly it is presented to the world by our political leaders, as a peace loving nation; but this peace loving nation has been almost continuously at war since the end of World War II"

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"Once you've made the decision that they are the bad guys and you are the good guys, then you don't question anything you do; you don't have to think anymore. You just have to make that one simple decision, and then...no more questioning.

Then you can bomb Hiroshima. and you can bomb Nagasaki. You can bomb Tokyo and kill 100,000 people in one night. You can bomb Dresden and kill, we don't know how many people, 50,000? 100,000?, we don't know. You can kill 600,000 German civilians in the course of World War II and roughly the same number, about 600,000 Japanese civilians in World War II, and it's all okay...because they are the bad guys and you are the good guys; and you don't ever stop to ask the question, "These 600,000 civilians who died", whether in Germany or Japan, "were they bad guys?""

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"When you drop bombs from 30,000 feet...you don't see anybody down below. You don't hear screams; you don't see any blood; you don't see kids with their arms torn off. You're just hitting a target. You're doing your job."

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"The interests of the people in power may not be your interests. They have their interest separate from yours. Until you become skeptical of the claims of the leaders of the country; so long as you think we are bound together by something called, "national interest"...you will be deceived again and again."

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"War is always a war against civilians. When you go to war against a tyrant, who do you kill? You kill the victims of the tyrant."

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"War, because of what it does to human beings, cannot be justified."

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"We are going to have to solve the problems that exist in the world without war. That's the great challenge before the human race today."

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"If war is to be abolished, just as if any war is going to be stopped, it'll be up to the citizens of the country to stop it."

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"We will have to think of ourselves as key players in whatever change needs to take place in the United States and in the world. Therefore, all of us bear some responsibility to do something; nothing big, nothing heroic, even something small, because great social movements are made up of very small actions undertaken by very large numbers of people, which at certain points in history come together and bring about change."