RIP Howard Zinn.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/us/28zinn.htmlHe probably did more damage in more history departments than anyone else I can think of and his propagandistic presentation of "history" was like crack for those who got their politics from Holywood stars and John Lennon songs, but he really believed in what he did and lived a good life.
I only met him once, in the 60s, but I liked him. He was on the right side of a lot of things that mattered. A terrible historian, but a good man.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
