Noam Chomsky Quotes

The whole basis for the US intervention in Colombia is outrageously racist and arrogant.

The US reasserted control over Nicaragua in 1990. Since then, the country has experienced a steep decline. It's now the second poorest country in the hemisphere.

It's fine to criticize somebody else's crimes and misdeeds, but you don't talk about your own. The only exception is a country that is defeated. And even that is rather nuanced.

The development of space technology, including space warfare today, is similar in its technological-industrial significance to the development of navies a hundred years ago.

Destruction of the environment is not only rational; it's exactly what you're taught to do in college.

If you accept the institutional lunacy, then the policies are rational.

Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on the society. It's also extremely dangerous with all the weapons development.

When I am at home, I never watch TV, but when I am abroad in a hotel I take a look at the BBC to find out what's going on.

The desire for hope and change is easily understandable. In many ways it's even more dramatic in Europe.

I think there are real possibilities of reaching out to many of the Trump voters, those who voted for Obama believing his rhetoric.

The world was warned of extremely severe dangers unless urgent steps are taken to deal with global warming.

What is important to us is to reverse the shameful course being pursued by America. It won't be easy, but it must and can be done.

I don't entirely agree with the slogan "speaking truth to power."

It also seems beyond controversy that moral responsibilities are greater to the extent that people "have the resources, the training, the facilities and opportunities to speak and act effectively."

Edward Said is a very honorable representative of the "intellectual" in the sense of the term that he defines.

That is [Edward Said] proposal as to how the term should be used. It surely does not describe those who are called "intellectuals" in standard usage, as he would be the first to agree.

Intellectuals (in the standard sense of the term, not [ Edward] Said's prescriptive sense) are the people who write history.

If the authors and custodians of history turn out to have an attractive image, it is only reasonable to look beyond and ask whether the image they construct is accurate.

To use the terms that are reserved for official enemies, it is the commissars and apparatchiks, not the dissidents, who are respected and privileged within their own societies.

I know of people whose actions and words I admire and respect. Some are called "intellectuals," some are not.

History records endless struggles to enlarge those realms, inspiring ones; it also records painful reversals and setbacks.

What can realistically be done depends on the historical moment. The same is true with regard to the agents.

Fed and electoral college could use some tinkering, but they are not the source of the problems.

The reason I am a political radical is that I work on syntax. If I worked on semantics (which in fact I do), I'd be a good Thatcherite.

I've been interested in the reports on Rojava. It seems clear that there are positive developments.

I mean the reason the sit-down strikes struck such fear in the hearts of management was that they knew that a sit-down strike was just one step short of taking over the factory.

The U.S. is different from Europe and other industrial countries.

The U.S. is, to a very unusual extent, a business-run society.

U.S. has no feudal background, so institutions that remained in place in Europe did not remain in place here.

The fact of the matter is that the U.S. is run by an unusually class-conscious, dedicated business class that has a very violent labor history, much worse than in Europe.

The attack on unions has been far more extreme here [in U.S], and it has been much more successful.

There are some very general ideas that people can keep in mind; they're kind of truisms. It's only worth mentioning them because they're always denied.

If [Barack] Obama or the boss or the newspapers or anyone else tells you they're doing this, that, or the other thing, dismiss it or assume the opposite is true, which it often is.

They [the union] were members of the Communist Party - they didn't care one way or another about Russia, they just cared about the United States.

The number of illegal firings tripled during the [Ronald] Reagan years. It was at that time that you started getting these companies that specialized in how to destroy unions.

In fact, a rather striking aspect of business propaganda in the United States is the demonization of government, starting after the Second World War.

In a democracy the day when you pay your taxes, April 15, would be a day of celebration, because you're getting together to provide resources for the programs you decided on.

The majority of the population thinks that if the government runs healthcare, they're going to take away your freedom. At the same time, the public favors a national healthcare program.

You have to love that government, but hate the government that might work in your interest and that you could control. That's an interesting propaganda task, but it's been carried out very well.

You can see it in the worship of [Ronald] Reagan, which portrays him as somebody who saved us from government. Actually he was an apostle of big government.

In fact, anyone who merits attention and who promotes any cause at all is doing so on the basis of a belief that it is somehow good for humans, because of their inherent nature.

There is nothing more mysterious about the concept human nature than about the concept bee or chicken nature, at least for those who regard humans as creatures in the biological world.

The human digestive and visual systems did clearly evolve over a very long period.

While language can surely be used for communication (as can much else), communication probably has no special role in its design or evolution.

A property of an organism enters into its life (and survival) in many different ways, some more salient than others. But there is no simple notion of its being "for" some function.

Of course language arose in a Darwinian biological world, because that's all there is, but that world relates only superficially to the pop-biology that circulates informally.

I don't encourage socialists or anarchists to accept falsehoods, in particular, to see revolutionary potential where there is none.

No sane human being devotes 100% of his or her life to political activism.

In America, we will use force whenever we like against anyone we regard as a potential threat, and maybe we will delegate that right to clients, but it's not for others.

I don't think all thinking is a kind of rational structure. But I don't think it is correct to identify the rational-nonrational dichotomy with the linguistic-nonlinguistic dichotomy.