Noam Chomsky Quotes

My own feeling is that a corporation has no right to have a political or social influence.

As far as DSA is concerned, I'm perfectly happy to be associated with it while disagreeing with a large part of the leadership.

When you read about the end of the Soviet Union, it's always about the "death of socialism." They never say "the death of democracy." But it makes about the same sense.

Sectors of power are not going to favor the flourishing of dissidence.

We don't live in tyrannies, you know, the king doesn't decide what's legitimate, and there's much more freedom than there was in the past.

The "end of history" has been proclaimed many times, always falsely.

I've already supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries.

[Ronald] Reagan bitterly hated unions and wanted them destroyed. This began with the air controllers' strike and went on from there.

[Companies that specialized in how to destroy unions] don't make it a secret, and they have all sorts of techniques for management to destroy unions.

We have to be irrational and vindictive, because that's going to frighten people. And we have to maintain this for years. And then we'll be able to carry out the actions that we want to carry out.

I don't really think there have been transitional periods to socialism. There have been efforts, but they have usually been destroyed by a combination of external force and internal corruption.

What was the invasion of South Vietnam, for example, in 1962, when Kennedy sent the Air Force to bomb South Vietnam and start chemical warfare? That's aggression.

A good education instills in you the intuitive comprehension - it becomes unconscious and reflexive - that you just don't think certain things, things that are threatening to power interests.

It's true that language is in a sense linear but that is as obvious as perceptual space is three-dimensional.

Technologies can be liberating, but it can also be a tool of coercion and control.

California is maybe the richest place in the world. They're destroying the best public education system in the world.

I think there was an overemphasis in the early stage on militarization rather than directly providing relief. I don't think it has any long-term significance.

Technology can be used that way and it can also be used in other ways.

One can neither agree nor disagree with a terminological proposal, as long as it is clear that it is just that: terminological.

Academics are mostly professionals, involved in their work and other concerns of their own, with no particular interest in the workings of the ideological system.

I would, however, question the implication that there is some novelty in this beyond modalities [of Mikhail Bakunin], which naturally change as institutions change and develop.

We don't think about it, but it has a tremendous effect. But these are things you don't see right in front of your eyes. You need to think about them a little, to see what the consequences are.

I doubt that national languages will disappear. In fact, to some extent they're becoming more diverse, like in Europe.

Education is not for profit. If you're not in education for profit, it's not going to be a fair critique for education.

We're human beings; we're not robots. And face-to-face contact is something totally different than typing a text message and then forgetting about it.

I'm into eating as little as possible... I never cook. Never use the stove or anything.

My grandchildren are on social media all the time, and they think they have friends. But it's not what I would've called a friend, ever.

I don't buy much. Almost buy nothing. I buy what I need, do it the easiest way possible.

The intellectual world is deeply conformist... We talk a lot about the crimes of others. When it comes to our own crimes, we are nationalists in the Orwellian sense.

Democracy is always harmful to elite interests. Almost by definition.

I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.

If you're teaching, say, physics, there's no point in persuading a student that you're right. You want to encourage them to find out what the truth is, which is probably that you're wrong.

If you're independent-minded in school, you're probably going to get in trouble very early on. That's not the trait that's being preferred or cultivated.

If you give up every time you don't achieve the immediate gain you want, you're just guaranteeing that the worst is going to happen... You can't expect an easy victory after one protest march.

No honest journalist should be willing to describe himself or herself as 'embedded.' To say, 'I'm an embedded journalist' is to say, 'I'm a government Propagandist.

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

This Sarah Palin phenomenon is very curious. I think somebody watching us from Mars—they would think the country has gone insane.

It is useful to remember that no matter where we turn, there is rarely any shortage of elevated ideals to accompany the resort to violence.

Thinking is a human feature. Will AI someday really think? That's like asking if submarines swim. If you call it swimming then robots will think, yes.

Small differences in a system of great power can have enormous consequences. [Source: Al Jazeera 'Upfront' interview]

Willingness to be puzzled is a valuable trait to cultivate, from childhood to advanced inquiry.

It is probable that the most inhuman monsters, even the Himmlers and the Mengeles, convince themselves that they are engaged in noble and courageous acts.

The principle of universality is not a 'theory'. Just moral truism.

...the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon.

[W]e have a democracy that uses free elections to put in place known obstructionists, and a media that disproportionately gives a forum to economically driven ideology over sound science.

Another problem with the official definitions of terror is that it follows from them that the US is a leading terrorist state.

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....

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.