A Quote by Howard Zinn

You can't be neutral on a moving train.

Howard Zinn

Quote Topics

Moving Neutral Train

Quote Author

Howard Zinn
American - Historian
August 24, 1922 - January 27, 2010

The film's title You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train. comes from something I used to say in teaching my students "This is not going to be a neutral class." The world is already moving in certain directions and wars are going on and children are going hungry. Terrible things are happening. And so to be neutral in a situation like this is to collaborate with whatever is going on. And I don't want to collaborate with the world as it is. I want to intrude myself. I want to participate in changing the direction of things. So that's the origin of the title.

Howard Zinn

I once did a Sprite commercial where I had to come out of the train station, jump out of a turnstile, jump on the side of a moving train. I had to run down the top of this moving train while it was going through the mountains and valleys. It was really hairy. I got my honorary stuntwoman card for that. I was proud.

Sharon Stone

Everyone talks about religious liberty, but no one believes it. So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.

Gary North

I support an all-of-the-above approach attacking climate change - everything from moving America towards being carbon-neutral, moving our country towards clean energy.

Tammy Duckworth

It is as hard to find a neutral critic as it is a neutral country in time of war. I suppose if a critic were neutral, he wouldn't trouble to write anything.

Katherine Anne Porter

We needed to find some options for moving to neutral ground. I was tasked with doing that.

Karen Handel

Indeed, it is impossible to be neutral. In a world already moving in certain directions, where wealth and power are already distributed in certain ways, neutrality means accepting the way things are now. It is a world of clashing interests ? war against peace, nationalism against internationalism, equality against greed, and democracy against elitism ? and it seems to me both impossible and undesirable to be neutral in those conflicts.

Howard Zinn

When people talked about O.J. Simpson being race-neutral, that was a race card. It just meant we don't think of him as black. But race-neutral is just like flesh-tone Band-aids. It's not neutral; it's white.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.

Jean Cocteau

Our life is a constant journey, from birth to death. The landscape changes, the people change, our needs change, but the train keeps moving. Life is the train, not the station.

Paulo Coelho

... That would be like stepping in front of a moving train and saying, 'Hey, honey, come stand next to me.'" I hopped off the wall and stood next to him. "Anytime." He just looked at me. "I've never killed a train before. It might be fun to try.

Ilona Andrews

'Iron Man 3' was very educational. There's a train that starts moving which already has so many moving parts, and it's a constant process of animatics and storyboards and consulting meetings, and it's a very mechanical process once the script is written. It's sprawling, and they're throwing money at it to get these things accomplished.

Shane Black

I've always been a bit of a space geek. I wrote an article years ago about the neutral buoyancy tank, which is this biblically sized pool where they train astronauts. And it was just the coolest thing.

Mary Roach

From the top of the staircase she sees the London train, modern and elegant, and she tells herself again: Whether it's good luck or bad to be born onto this earth, the best way to spend a life here is to let yourself be carried along, as I am moving at this moment, by a cheerful, noisy crowd moving forward.