Top 100 Noam Chomsky Quotes
#1. Reagan was extreme. Beginning of his administration, one of the first things was to call in scabs - hadn't been done for a long time, and it's illegal in most countries - in the air controller strike.
Noam Chomsky
#2. As far as Marx's analysis of capitalism, there's a lot of very useful ideas in it, but he's developing an abstract model of 19th century capitalism. It's abstract and it's changed.
Noam Chomsky
#3. People not only don't know what's happening to them, they don't even know that they don't know.
Noam Chomsky
#4. In the West, you don't get in any trouble if you tell the truth, but you still can't do it. Not only can't you tell the truth, you can't think the truth. It's just so deeply embedded, deeply instilled, that without any meaningful coercion it comes out the same way it does in a totalitarian state.
Noam Chomsky
#5. At Harvard they teach people how to rule the world and at MIT they teach them how to make the world work. This is for the elite schools. For the rest, turn them into servants.
Noam Chomsky
#6. When Britain and the U.S. invaded Iraq, it was with the reasonable expectation that it was going to increase the threat of terror, as it has.
Noam Chomsky
#7. The big change, the really radical change in communication, was in the late 19th century. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph is astronomical. Everything since then has been small increments, including the internet.
Noam Chomsky
#8. Do you train for passing tests or do you train for creative inquiry?
Noam Chomsky
#9. The indoctrination is so deep that educated people think they're being objective.
Noam Chomsky
#10. Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things.
Noam Chomsky
#11. If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That's not going to happen if you care only about yourself.
Noam Chomsky
#12. Turkey must find its place if, of course, it can heal its internal sores, and none is more malignant than the perennial Kurdish issue.
Noam Chomsky
#13. In every country except - industrial country except the United States, the government uses its massive purchasing power to negotiate drug prices. That's one of the reasons prices are so much higher in the United States than in other countries.
Noam Chomsky
#14. Social and political issues in general seem to me fairly simple; the effort to obfuscate them in esoteric and generally vacuous theory is one of the contributions of the intelligentsia to enhancing their own power and the power of those they serve.
Noam Chomsky
#15. Labor # Unions are the leading force for # democratization and # progress .
Noam Chomsky
#16. Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.
Noam Chomsky
#17. If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does, he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees.
Noam Chomsky
#18. Social action must be animated by a vision of a future society, and by explicit judgments of value concerning the character of this future society.
Noam Chomsky
#19. Now financial liberalization is just a catastrophe waiting to happen, and there are very well understood reasons for that.
Noam Chomsky
#20. The events of October 1962 are widely hailed as Kennedy's finest hour.
Noam Chomsky
#21. The intelligent minority are a "specialized class" who are responsible for setting policy and for "the formation of a sound public opinion,
Noam Chomsky
#22. When secular figures are turned into divinities, they way they are in Peian Yang or Stanford University - that I don't like.
Noam Chomsky
#23. It is more gratifying to bask in praise for courageously protesting the abuses of official enemies: a fine activity, but not the priority of a value-oriented intellectual who takes the responsibilities of that stance seriously.
Noam Chomsky
#24. I am not too happy with terms like "the left", to be honest. And I don't use it much ... .if by "the left" you mean people who are committed to peace and justice and freedom and so on, there can't be elements of the left opposed to workers' movement, at least under that definition.
Noam Chomsky
#25. Rendition is just sending people abroad to be tortured.
Noam Chomsky
#26. Violence can succeed, as Americans know well from the conquest of the national territory. But at terrible cost. It can also provoke violence in response, and often does.
Noam Chomsky
#27. When I arrived in Laos and found young Americans living there, out of free choice, I was surprised. After only a week, I began to have a sense of the appeal of the country and its people - along with despair about its future.
Noam Chomsky
#28. If you decide not to make use of the opportunities you have, not to live your life in a way that's constructive and helpful, you end up looking back and asking, 'why did I bother living?
Noam Chomsky
#29. Reading a book is an intellectual exercise, which stimulates thought, questions,
Noam Chomsky
#30. Obama's primary constituency was financial institutions. They were the core of the funding for his campaign. They expect to be paid back. And they were. They were paid back by coming out richer and more powerful than they were before the crisis that they created.
Noam Chomsky
#31. I don't say you're self-censoring - I'm sure you believe everything you're saying; but what I'm saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting.
Noam Chomsky
#32. The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.
Noam Chomsky
#33. In Egypt, on the eve of Tahrir Square, there was a major poll which found that overwhelmingly - 80-90%, numbers like that - Egyptians regarded the main threats they face as the U.S. and Israel. They don't like Iran - Arabs generally don't like Iran - but they didn't consider it a threat.
Noam Chomsky
#34. I don't think that the United States cares. They just assume that North Korea will soon have nuclear weapons.
Noam Chomsky
#35. Chinese military spending is carefully monitored by the United States.
Noam Chomsky
#36. Around 2008 and again in 2013 NATO officially offered the Ukraine the opportunity to join NATO. That's something no Russian government is ever going to accept. It's right at the geopolitical heartland of Russia.
Noam Chomsky
#37. There happen to be a lot of people around who spent an hour on the Internet and think they know a lot of physics, but it doesn't work like that ... There's a reason there are graduate schools in these departments.
Noam Chomsky
#38. I like the cold weather. It means you get work done.
Noam Chomsky
#39. As Bromberger observed, rules are understood to be elements of the computational systems that determine the sound and meaning of the infinite array of expressions of a language; the information so derived is accessed by other systems in language use.
Noam Chomsky
#40. European settlers coming to a foreign land, settling there, and either committing genocide against or expelling the indigenous people. The Zionists have not invented anything new in this respect.
Noam Chomsky
#41. The debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny.
Noam Chomsky
#42. We're supposed to believe that the press is liberal, dangerous, adversarial, out-of-control. That itself is an extremely good example of corporate propaganda.
Noam Chomsky
#44. The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.
Noam Chomsky
#45. Independence of mind, enthusiasm, dedication to the field, and willingness to challenge and question and to explore new direction. There are plenty of people like that, but schools tend to discourage those characteristics.
Noam Chomsky
#46. I mean, you can pretend up to a certain point that the world has infinite resources and that it's an infinite wastebasket-but at some point you're going to run into the reality, which is that that isn't true.
Noam Chomsky
#47. Remember, weapons of mass destruction don't mean missiles.
Noam Chomsky
#48. My intellectual achievement was retarded when I went to high school. I sort of sank into a black hole because I had to go to the high-achieving, academic public high school.
Noam Chomsky
#49. The invasion was undertaken with the expectation that it probably would increase the threat of terror. That was the advice given by the government's own intelligence agencies and by others, by lots of specialists on terror, who said it was very likely to increase terror, for
Noam Chomsky
#50. You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.
Noam Chomsky
#51. They have the same point of view. The two parties are two factions of the business party. Most of the population doesn't even bother voting because it looks meaningless. They're marginalized and properly distracted. At least that's the goal.
Noam Chomsky
#52. U.S. analysts estimate that Russian military expenditures have tripled during the Bush-Putin years, in large measure a predicted reaction to the Bush administration's militancy and aggressiveness.
Noam Chomsky
#53. Bradley Manning has been imprisoned without charge, under torture, which is what solitary confinement is.
Noam Chomsky
#54. I have been - I have spoken in Bir Zeit a number of times.
Noam Chomsky
#55. Unlike Iran, Israel refuses to allow inspections at all, refuses to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, has hundreds of nuclear weapons, has advanced delivery systems.
Noam Chomsky
#56. I do think that Magna Carta and international law are worth paying some attention to.
Noam Chomsky
#57. Far from creating independent thinkers, schools have always, throughout history, played an institutional role in a system of control and coercion. And once you are well educated you have already been socialized in ways that support the power structure, which, in turn, rewards you immensely.
Noam Chomsky
#58. Chomsky also reveals how neoliberalism is hardly a new thing, but merely the current version of the battle for the wealthy few to circumscribe the political rights and civic powers of the many. Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
#59. Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that's so deep in history that there's no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.
Noam Chomsky
#60. Armed attack has a definition in international law. It means sudden, overwhelming, instantaneous ongoing attack.
Noam Chomsky
#61. Dissent, protest, presures of a wide variety that escape elite control can modify the calculus of costs of planners, and offer a slight hope that Washington can be compelled to permit at least some steps towards "justice, freedom and democracy" within its domains.
Noam Chomsky
#62. Everyone knows that when you look at a television ad, you do not expect to get information. You expect to see delusion and imagery.
Noam Chomsky
#63. One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think - even the activists - that instant gratification is required. You constantly hear: 'Look I went to a demonstration, and we didn't stop the war so what's the use of doing it again?'
Noam Chomsky
#64. If you want to end terrorism stop participating in it.
Noam Chomsky
#65. ( ... ) rationality is a very narrowly restricted skill.
Noam Chomsky
#66. Farming out atrocities to paramilitaries is standard operating procedure.
Noam Chomsky
#67. The first democratic revolution was England in the 1640s.
Noam Chomsky
#68. After my first year of college, each course I took in every field was so boring that I didn't even go to the classes.
Noam Chomsky
#69. State formation has been a brutal project, with many hideous consequences. But the results exist, and their pernicious aspects should be overcome.
Noam Chomsky
#71. In the case of the environment, there's no one to bail it out.
Noam Chomsky
#72. States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.
Noam Chomsky
#73. Philosophers often appear to intend to want to get answers about humans that we can't get about insects, and that's too much, yaknow?
Noam Chomsky
#74. What happened in the missile crisis in October 1962 has been prettified to make it look as if acts of courage and thoughtfulness abounded. The truth is that the whole episode was almost insane.
Noam Chomsky
#75. Judge Afiuni has suffered enough. She has been subject to acts of violence and humiliations to undermine her human dignity. I am convinced that she must be set free.
Noam Chomsky
#76. The social system is taking on a form in which finding out what you want to do is less and less of an option because your life is too structured, organised, controlled and disciplined.
Noam Chomsky
#77. The beauty of our system is that it isolates everybody. Each person is sitting alone in front of the tube, you know. It's very hard to have ideas or thoughts under those circumstances. You can't fight the world alone.
Noam Chomsky
#78. No honest journalist should be willing to describe himself or herseif as 'embedded.' To say, 'I'm an embedded journalist' is to say, 'I'm a government Propagandist.
Noam Chomsky
#79. He wants to focus on what he calls 'cultural issues.' That makes sense, because when you're going to rob people blind you don't want to have them focus their attention on economic issues.
Noam Chomsky
#80. I think there is a good reason why the propaganda system works that way. It recognizes that the public will not support the actual policies. Therefore it is important to prevent any knowledge or understanding of them.
Noam Chomsky
#82. Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history.
Noam Chomsky
#83. Roughly speaking, I think it's accurate to say that a corporate elite of managers and owners governs the economy and the political system as well, at least in very large measure.
Noam Chomsky
#84. NATO was constructed on the - with the reason, whether one believes it or not, that it was going to defend Western Europe from Russian assault. Once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, that reason was gone. So, first question: why does NATO exist?
Noam Chomsky
#85. You are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions.
Noam Chomsky
#87. Any attempt to solve a conflict has to touch upon its very core; the core, more often than not, lies in its history.
Noam Chomsky
#88. My own feeling is that one should refuse to participate in any activity that implements American aggression - thus tax refusal, draft refusal, avoidance of work that can be used by the agencies of militarism and repression, all seem to me essential.
Noam Chomsky
#89. U.S. Government propaganda tries to give the impression that aerial bombardment achieves near-surgical accuracy, so that military targets can be destroyed with minimal effect on civilians. Technical documents give a different picture.
Noam Chomsky
#90. Public opinion can be influential, the media can be influential.
Noam Chomsky
#91. Occasionally the conflict between 'what we stand for' and 'what we do' has been forthrightly addressed.
Noam Chomsky
#92. Free institutions certainly exist, but a tradition of passivity and conformism restricts their use - a cynic might say that this is why they continue to exist.
Noam Chomsky
#93. The U.S. increasingly has taken on the characteristics of what we describe as 'failed states.'
Noam Chomsky
#94. The Tea Party movement itself is maybe 15, 20 percent of the electorate. It's relatively affluent, white, nativist. You know, it has rather traditional nativist streaks to it. But what is much more important, I think, is the - is its outrage.
Noam Chomsky
#95. People seem to know about May Day everywhere except where it began, here in the United States of America. That's because those in power have done everything they can to erase its real meaning.
Noam Chomsky
#96. When the disaster began to hit the wealthy as well, the "modern scientific methods of development based solidly on capitalism" (Haines) suddenly became proofs of the evils of statism and socialism - another quick transition that takes place when needed. To
Noam Chomsky
#97. The fact is that if you have not developed language, you simply don't have access to most of human experience, and if you don't have access to experience, then you're not going to be able to think properly.
Noam Chomsky
#98. I don't think a Jewish or Christian or Islamic state is a proper concept. I would object to the United States as a Christian state.
Noam Chomsky
#99. Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily, and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on the society.
Noam Chomsky
#100. Anywhere in Latin America there is a potential threat of the pathology of caudillismo and it has to be guarded against.
Noam Chomsky
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