Howard Zinn

Here's a lovely passage from American historian Howard Zinn:
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"I don't want to invent victories for people's movements.
But to think that history-writing must aim simply to
recapitulate the failures that dominate the past
is to make historians collaborators in an endless
cycle of defeat. If history is to be creative, to
anticipate a possible future without denying the
past, it should, I believe, emphasize new
possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes
of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people
showed their ability to resist, to join together,
and occasionally to win. I am supposing, or
perhaps only hoping, that our future may be
found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion
rather than in its solid centuries of warfare."
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The full article is here