Purdy Patrick > Patrick's Quotes

“Where tyranny is law, revolution is order,” Albizu declared.”
― Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

“It wasn’t until 1927 that traffic lights were standardized. Before that, drivers in Manhattan stopped on green, started on yellow, and understood red to mean “caution.” A different system prevailed in Cleveland, a different one in Chicago, a different one in Buffalo, and so on.”
― Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

“Bread baked in medieval ovens got ashy on the bottom because it was placed directly on stone just heated by a fire. Because of this, the poshest medieval diners wouldn’t have bothered with the lower crust, but rather the upper crust.”
― Danièle Cybulskie, Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction

“Archery targets were called butts, which is why someone who is the target of a joke is still called the ‘butt’ of the joke.”
― Danièle Cybulskie, Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction

“Prisoners would be taken to a castle’s keep and kept under guard. The French word for keep – donjon – is what gives us the English word ‘dungeon’.”
― Danièle Cybulskie, Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction

“The ‘royal we’ – when monarchs refer to themselves as ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ – is a throwback to the days in which it was believed that an anointed king was more than just a man: he was part divine.”
― Danièle Cybulskie, Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction

“Many of these important days called for celebration and feasting, and no work was permitted on holy days, which is why the word ‘holiday’ is still associated with taking the day off.”
― Danièle Cybulskie, Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction

“In medieval calendars, the major holy feasts and festivals were written down in red ink: they were red-letter days.”
― Danièle Cybulskie, Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction

“The very same spices, powders, and mixing methods that were used in medieval medicine and cosmetics were useful in making pigments, too, so apothecaries also sold ink. This saved scribes and illuminators who could afford it the trouble of making their own inks, and the apothecary’s long practice and skill with mixtures gave them a better chance at having regular colours and consistency, as well. As a complementary skill, apothecaries’ proficiency with wax as a binding and mixing agent led them to create and sell wax products alongside their other wares, such as candles, votives (as seen above), and sealing wax. The combination of ink and sealing wax made it a logical step for apothecaries to sell parchment, and other stationery items, too. Our modern habit of heading to the pharmacy for a headache cure, grooming products, and stationery is part of a long tradition, indeed.”
― Danièle Cybulskie, Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction

“Men tended to wear leggings or hose that were two pieces, tied at the top or gartered at the knee,”
― Danièle Cybulskie, Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction

“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

“The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don’t listen to it, you will never know what justice is.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present

“If there are necessary sacrifices to be made for human progress, is it not essential to hold to the principle that those to be sacrificed must make the decision themselves? We can all decide to give up something of ours, but do we have the right to throw into the pyre the children of others, or even our own children, for a progress which is not nearly as clear or present as sickness or health, life or death?”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present

“African slavery lacked two elements that made American slavery the most cruel form of slavery in history: the frenzy for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture; the reduction of the slave to less than human status by the use of racial hatred, with that relentless clarity based on color, where white was master, black was slave.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present

“By 1800, 10 to 15 million blacks had been transported as slaves to the Americas, representing perhaps one-third of those originally seized in Africa. It is roughly estimated that Africa lost 50 million human beings to death and slavery in those centuries we call the beginnings of modern Western civilization, at the hands of slave traders and plantation owners in Western Europe and America, the countries deemed the most advanced in the world.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

“This unequal treatment, this developing combination of contempt and oppression, feeling and action, which we call “racism”—was this the result of a “natural” antipathy of white against black? The question is important, not just as a matter of historical accuracy, but because any emphasis on “natural” racism lightens the responsibility of the social system. If racism can’t be shown to be natural, then it is the result of certain conditions, and we are impelled to eliminate those conditions.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

“Around 1776, certain important people in the English colonies made a discovery that would prove enormously useful for the next two hundred years. They found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from favorites of the British Empire. In the process, they could hold back a number of potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support for the rule of a new, privileged leadership.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

“They created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

“What seems to have happened in Boston is that certain lawyers, editors, and merchants of the upper classes, but excluded from the ruling circles close to England—men like James Otis and Samuel Adams—organized a “Boston Caucus” and through their oratory and their writing “molded laboring-class opinion, called the ‘mob’ into action, and shaped its behaviour.” This is Gary Nash’s description of Otis, who, he says, “keenly aware of the declining fortunes and the resentment of ordinary townspeople, was mirroring as well as molding popular opinion.” We have here a forecast of the long history of American politics, the mobilization of lower-class energy by upper-class politicians, for their own purposes. This was not purely deception; it involved, in part, a genuine recognition of lower-class grievances, which helps to account for its effectiveness as a tactic over the centuries”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

“In New York, that same year of the Boston house attacks, someone wrote to the New York Gazette, “Is it equitable that 99, rather 999, should suffer for the Extravagance or Grandeur of one, especially when it is considered that men frequently owe their Wealth to the impoverishment of their Neighbors?”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

“an enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive of the common happiness, of mankind; and therefore every free state hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present

“It took the Stamp Act crisis to make this leadership aware of its dilemma. A political group in Boston called the Loyal Nine—merchants, distillers, shipowners, and master craftsmen who opposed the Stamp Act—organized a procession in August 1765 to protest it. They put fifty master craftsmen at the head, but needed to mobilize shipworkers from the North End and mechanics and apprentices from the South End. Two or three thousand were in the procession (Negroes were excluded). They marched to the home of the stampmaster and burned his effigy. But after the “gentlemen” who organized the demonstration left, the crowd went further and destroyed some of the stampmaster’s property. These were, as one of the Loyal Nine said, “amazingly inflamed people.” The Loyal Nine seemed taken aback by the direct assault on the wealthy furnishings of the stampmaster. The rich set up armed patrols. Now a town meeting was called and the same leaders who had planned the demonstration denounced the violence and disavowed the actions of the crowd.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

“The use of the phrase “all men are created equal” was probably not a deliberate attempt to make a statement about women. It was just that women were beyond consideration as worthy of inclusion. They were politically invisible.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

“To say that the Declaration of Independence, even by its own language, was limited to life, liberty, and happiness for white males is not to denounce the makers and signers of the Declaration for holding the ideas expected of privileged males of the eighteenth century. Reformers and radicals, looking discontentedly at history, are often accused of expecting too much from a past political epoch—and sometimes they do. But the point of noting those outside the arc of human rights in the Declaration is not, centuries late and pointlessly, to lay impossible moral burdens on that time. It is to try to understand the way in which the Declaration functioned to mobilize certain groups of Americans, ignoring others. Surely, inspirational language to create a secure consensus is still used, in our time, to cover up serious conflicts of interest in that consensus, and to cover up, also, the omission of large parts of the human race.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

“Tyranny is Tyranny let it come from whom it may.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present

“Carl Degler says (Out of Our Past): “No new social class came to power through the door of the American revolution. The men who engineered the revolt were largely members of the colonial ruling class.” George Washington was the richest man in America. John Hancock was a prosperous Boston merchant. Benjamin Franklin was a wealthy printer. And so on.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

“It was Thomas Jefferson, in France as ambassador at the time of Shays’ Rebellion, who spoke of such uprisings as healthy for society. In a letter to a friend he wrote: “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing. . . . It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government. . . . God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. . . . The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well-born, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share in the government. . . . Can a democratic assembly who annually revolve in the mass of the people be supposed steadily to pursue the public good? Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy. . . .”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

“In Federalist Paper # 10, James Madison argued that representative government was needed to maintain peace in a society ridden by factional disputes. These disputes came from “the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.” The problem, he said, was how to control the factional struggles that came from inequalities in wealth. Minority factions could be controlled, he said, by the principle that decisions would be by vote of the majority. So the real problem, according to Madison, was a majority faction, and here the solution was offered by the Constitution, to have “an extensive republic,” that is, a large nation ranging over thirteen states, for then “it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. . . . The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States.” Madison’s argument can be seen as a sensible argument for having a government which can maintain peace and avoid continuous disorder. But is it the aim of government simply to maintain order, as a referee, between two equally matched fighters? Or is it that government has some special interest in maintaining a certain kind of order, a certain distribution of power and wealth, a distribution in which government officials are not neutral referees but participants? In that case, the disorder they might worry about is the disorder of popular rebellion against those monopolizing the society’s wealth. This interpretation makes sense when one looks at the economic interests, the social backgrounds, of the makers of the Constitution.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

“When economic interest is seen behind the political clauses of the Constitution, then the document becomes not simply the work of wise men trying to establish a decent and orderly society, but the work of certain groups trying to maintain their privileges, while giving just enough rights and liberties to enough of the people to ensure popular support.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present