The Optimism of Uncertainty

I highly recommend reading Howard Zinn's new book, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress. It is an excellent collection of essays about American history, government, race, justice, class, and individuals who stand up for what they believe. So many passages I could quote, but I'll just give you one from the closing page (which by no means spoils the rest, it in fact made me want to start again!)

"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 are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, it energizes us to act, and raises at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. 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 human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."