Noam Chomsky Quotes

I think there are all kinds of intrusions into private rights that make use of contemporary technology.

The one state/two state debate is irrelevant as Israel and the US consolidate Greater Israel.

A lot of the people involved in the media are very serious, honest people, and they will tell you, and I think they are right, that they are not being forced to write anything.

With regard to freedom of expression there are basically two positions: you defend it vigorously for views you hate, or you reject it in favor of Stalinist/Fascist standards.

Anti-union propaganda has been considerably more successful here [ in the U.S.] than in Europe, even among working people who would benefit [from] unions.

The drones are a terrorist weapon, they not only kill targets but also terrorise other people.

Democracy is a danger to any powerful group.

You keep plugging away--that's the way social change takes place. That's the way every social change in history has taken place: by a lot of people, who nobody ever heard of, doing work.

The point of advertising is to destroy markets.

Washington basically works for the corporate sector and Silicon Valley, technically at least, is suppose to sponsor initiative in creativity, whether it does or not is another question.

The worst drug of all by far is tobacco; the death toll from tobacco is just overwhelming.

Trump keeps the spotlight on himself with one act after another, assuming correctly that yesterday's antics will be swept aside by today's.

Universities are less constrained by authority and rigid doctrine in the United States than in most other societies, to my knowledge.

States are not moral agents.

People who don't accept that doctrinal system, they may try to survive in the media, but they are unlikely to.

The general principle is that the victors don't look at themselves or concede anything. The defeated typically have to, except when it's beneficial to the powerful for them not to.

I am opposed to the accumulation of executive power anywhere.

All media depend on advertisement to survive.

The two countries [Pakistan and India] have already come close to nuclear confrontation twice and this could get worse. So dealing with the relationship with India is extremely important.

Sports plays a societal role in engendering jingoist and chauvinist attitudes. They're designed to organize a community to be committed to their gladiators.

There is a kind of nonlinguistic thought going on which we are trying to represent in language, and we know that sometimes we fail.

The main selling appeal of NAFTA to US corporations is that it gives them an advantage in the North American market over their European and Japanese competitors.

The Soviet Union was pretty much what Lenin and Trotsky said it was.

There is kind of a fundamental conformity, which is a virtual requirement to enter into the media.

There are massive efforts on the part of the internet's corporate owners to try to direct it to become a technique of marginalisation and control.

Another problem is the confrontation with India. Pakistan just cannot survive if it continues to do so (continue this confrontation).

I don't see much use in general slogans. Sometimes it is worth resisting evil with lesser evil, very commonly in fact.

The basic principle is that the losers have to confess, not the victors. When they do it, it's a crime. When we do it, it's not. And more generally, it's the defeated who are tried, not the victors.

As long as nuclear weapons exist, the chances of survival of the human species are quite slight.

Borders are semiporous. Capital flows more freely than people across them. on C Span.

Public opinion can be influential, the media can be influential.

I think this country and the world would be far better off if the US is not an outlaw state.

In the years of the Reagan-Bush administration alone, about 1.5 million people were killed by South Africa just in the surrounding countries. Forget what was happening in South Africa and Namibia.

It is quite possible--overwhelmingly probable, one might guess--that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology

If you're worried about the deficit, pay attention to the fact that it's almost all attributable to military spending and the totally dysfunctional health program.

Humans have certain properties and characteristics which are intrinsic to them, just as every other organism does. That's human nature.

The death penalty can be tolerated only by extreme statist reactionaries who demand a state that is so powerful that it has the right to kill.

When I wrote about the Spanish Civil War many years later, I used documents that I picked up when I was a child, as a lot hadn't been published (a lot more resources are available now).

I think a very important aspect of language has to do with the establishment of social relations and interactions. Often, this is described as communication. But that is very misleading, I think.

The U.S. has the most dysfunctional healthcare system in the industrial world, has about twice the per capita costs, and some of the worst outcomes. It's also the only privatized system.

Freedom without opportunity is a devil's gift.

For a while, after the Second World War, when there was strong support for labor, this was done subtly.

Poor whites didn't have rights. They made all kind of restrictions on voting. So person meant relatively well - off, free white man.

Maybe the science is uncertain, maybe we don't have to worry about it. Climate change is the worst, but there's others.

We should not be speaking to, but with. That is second nature to any good teacher.

Of course, everybody says they're for peace. Hitler was for peace. Everybody is for peace. The question is: What kind of peace?

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.

As the capacity to coerce declines, it is natural to turn to control of opinion as the basis for authority and domination - a fundamental principle of government already emphasized by David Hume.

A default of the US government would not only be very harmful here, it would probably send the country back into deep recession, but it just might crash the international financial system.

There's a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.