A Quote by Howard Zinn
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.
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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.
Whatever is happening, whatever is changing, whatever is going or not going according to my plans - I release my hold on all of it. I leave behind who I think I am, who I want to be, what I want the world to be. I come home to the great peace of the present moment.
President Obama and I disagree on policy with Israel. He seems to say... 'We want peace, but we want to act like Switzerland. We're going to be a neutral party to everyone.' I think that's negotiating from weakness.
An interim title is just a guarantee at a title shot. If I'm going to fight the best guys in the world, I want a guarantee that I'm going to fight for the title.
What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can't be apolitical. It will come and get you. It's not that you shouldn't be neutral. It's that you won't be able to stay neutral.
You can't be neutral on a moving train.
I want to make the most out of the word ‘fame.’ I want to do good things with my fame, or whatever it is. I want to help and do charity work. There’s something going on in Chile right now with the water, so I think I’m going to down there in a month to help out. My grandfather worked with charities his whole entire life, and we grew up living with him. He always told me about the other side of the world and everything that’s going on.
Before the decathlon I'm constantly trying to convince myself that I want to do this, that I want to take myself to that place where it's going to hurt and things are going to be tough. But that's like anything - you want to give your best.
A lot of brands are saying they're going to make 'gender neutral' clothing. But clothing is gender neutral.
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.
This fight means the world to me. It's what I've been dreaming about since I was 10 years old to win a world title. I'm going in their with nothing less than a victory. I think it's safe to say the fight is not going the distance and it's going to be a fight of the year candidate. He's going to come to fight, I'm coming to fight and I plan on leaving September 8th as the new world champion
When you're doing an investigation of a company that is doing things that they don't want to be found out, and they say, "I don't want to be on tape," you're not suddenly going to step away and say, "Okay, I'm not going to make a film."
My career, I look at it in a Darwinian framework. I'm going to do exactly what I want, and I'm going to survive, or I'm not. I'm not going to pander. I'm not going to change things. I'm not going to do focus groups. I'll live and die by the sword. I don't care. Because I couldn't live with myself.
I'm not going to retire until I win the NWA World Heavyweight Title, the same belt my dad had. I'm going to win that title before I hang it up.
We are going to position ourselves as a world-class financial institution. We want to do things that are comparable to the best in the world. At the same time, we want to have very strong human qualities.
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.
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