I've always resented the smug statements of politicians, media commentators, corporate executives who talked of how, in America, if you worked hard you would become rich. The meaning of that was if you were poor it was because you hadn't worked hard enough. I knew this was a lite, about my father and millions of others, men and women who worked harder than anyone, harder than financiers and politicians, harder than anybody if you accept that when you work at an unpleasant job that makes it very hard work indeed.

People in the anti-war movement used it. He had been scheduled to speak at the Santa Monica Museum of Art for an event titled "A Collection of Ideas. in 1951.

Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88 he wrote more than 20 books which included his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United States. Howard Zinn (August 24 1922 – January 27 2010) was an American academic historian author playwright and social activist. He wrote extensively about the civil rights and anti-war movements as well as of the labor history of the United States.