Famous Quotes By Noam Chomsky

 

  1. As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.
  2. Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.
  3. Concentration of executive power, unless it's very temporary and for specific circumstances, let's say fighting world war two, it's an assault on democracy.
  4. Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.
  5. Humans have certain properties and characteristics which are intrinsic to them, just as every other organism does. That's human nature.
  6. I am opposed to the accumulation of executive power anywhere.
  7. I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.
  8. If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.
  9. If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
  10. If you are working 50 hours a week in a factory, you don't have time to read 10 newspapers a day and go back to declassified government archives. But such people may have far-reaching insights into the way the world works.
  11. In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society.
  12. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival.
  13. Real popular culture is folk art - coalminers' songs and so forth.
  14. Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.
  15. The 'anti-globalisation movement' is the most significant proponent of globalisation - but in the interests of people, not concentrations of state-private power.
  16. The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.
  17. The government of Israel doesn't like the kinds of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world.
  18. The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself.
  19. The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.
  20. The major advances in speed of communication and ability to interact took place more than a century ago. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph was far more radical than that from telephone to email!
  21. The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.
  22. The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.
  23. 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.
  24. The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another.
  25. There are two problems for our species' survival - nuclear war and environmental catastrophe - and we're hurtling towards them. Knowingly.
  26. Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.
  27. We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won't be a world - at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others.

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