Noam Chomsky Quotes And Sayings

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as “the father of modern linguistics”, Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy, and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is widely recognized as a paradigm shifter who helped spark a major revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind.

The Truth Is, I Have Absolutely No Professional Credentials - Literally, Which Is Why I'm Teaching At Mit.

Changes And Progress Very Rarely Are Gifts From Above. They Come Out Of Struggles From Below.

The Internet Could Be A Very Positive Step Towards Education, Organisation And Participation In A Meaningful Society.

All Through Latin America, There's Sharp Condemnation Of The Criminal Atrocities Of Sept. 11. But It's Qualified By The Observation That Although These Are Horrible Atrocities, They Are Not Unfamiliar.

Karl Marx Was In Favor Of Socialist And Communist-socialist Revolutions, But He Had A Pretty Nuanced View About It.

Anyone Can Be A Moral Individual, Concerned With Human Rights And Problems; But Only A College Professor, A Trained Expert, Can Solve Technical Problems By 'Sophisticated' Methods. Ergo, It Is Only Problems Of The Latter Sort That Are Important Or Real.

The Rise Of Capitalist Practice And Morality Brought With It A Radical Revision Of How The Commons Are Treated, And Also Of How They Are Conceived.

It Is Easier To Go To The Internet Than To Go To The Library, Undoubtedly. But The Shift From No Libraries To The Existence Of Libraries Was A Much Greater Shift Than What We've Seen With The Internet's Development.

It Cannot Be Too Often Stressed That Israel Had No Credible Pretext For Its 2008-9 Attack On Gaza, With Full U.s. Support And Illegally Using U.s. Weapons.

The Former Colonies, In Latin America In Particular, Have A Better Chance Than Ever Before To Overcome Centuries Of Subjugation, Violence And Foreign Intervention, Which They Have So Far Survived As Dependencies With Islands Of Luxury In A Sea Of Misery.

Debt Is A Social And Ideological Construct, Not A Simple Economic Fact.

The Probability Of Apocalypse Soon Cannot Be Realistically Estimated, But It Is Surely Too High For Any Sane Person To Contemplate With Equanimity.

On October 15, 1965, An Estimated 70,000 People Took Part In Large-scale Anti-war Demonstrations.

If The Nuremberg Laws Were Applied, Then Every Post-war American President Would Have Been Hanged.

It Is A Virtual Reflex For Governments To Plead Security Concerns When They Undertake Any Controversial Action, Often As A Pretext For Something Else.

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.

Governments Don't Control People Like They Used To.

Unlimited Economic Growth Has The Marvelous Quality Of Stilling Discontent While Maintaining Privilege, A Fact That Has Not Gone Unnoticed Among Liberal Economists.

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.

In The Late 1990s, Some Of The Worst Terrorist Atrocities In The World Were What The Turkish Government Itself Called State Terror, Namely Massive Atrocities, 80 Percent Of The Arms Coming From The United States, Millions Of Refugees, Tens Of Thousands Of People Killed, Hideous Repression, That's International Terror, And We Can Go On And On.

Growing Up In The Place I Did I Never Was Aware Of Any Other Option But To Question Everything.

When I Was A College Student And I Got Interested In Linguistics The Concern Among Students Was, This Is A Lot Of Fun, But After We Have Done A Structural Analysis Of Every Language In The World What's Left? It Was Assumed There Were Basically No Puzzles.

For 500 Years, Since European Explorers Came, Latin American Countries Had Been Separated From One Another. They Had Very Limited Relations. Integration Is A Prerequisite For Independence.

If You Don't Like What Someone Has To Say, Argue With Them.

Reviewing The Record Of American Intervention In Indochina In The Pentagon Papers, One Cannot Fail To Be Struck By The Continuity Of Basic Assumptions From One Administration To The Next. Never Has There Been The Slightest Deviation From The Principle That A Noncommunist Regime Must Be Imposed And Defended, Regardless Of Popular Sentiment.

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.

I Haven't Read Horowitz. I Didn't Used To Read Him When He Was A Stalinist, And I Don't Read Him Today.

The 'Anti-globalisation Movement' Is The Most Significant Proponent Of Globalisation - But In The Interests Of People, Not Concentrations Of State-private Power.

Governments Are Not Representative. They Have Their Own Power, Serving Segments Of The Population That Are Dominant And Rich.

In The Us, There Is Basically One Party - The Business Party. It Has Two Factions, Called Democrats And Republicans, Which Are Somewhat Different But Carry Out Variations On The Same Policies. By And Large, I Am Opposed To Those Policies. As Is Most Of The Population.

I Hope That A Move Toward Clemency With Judge Afiuni Would Be A Step Towards The Importance Of Maintaining A Properly Functioning Justice System.

The Deceit And Distortion Surrounding The American Invasion Of Vietnam Is By Now So Familiar That It Has Lost Its Power To Shock.

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.

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.

The United States Is Unusual Among The Industrial Democracies In The Rigidity Of The System Of Ideological Control - 'Indoctrination', We Might Say - Exercised Through The Mass Media.

Dissident Intellectuals Aren't All Beautiful.

People Who Criticize Power In The Jewish Community Are Regarded The Way Ahab Treated Elijah: You're A Traitor.

I Have Known People Who Are Working Class Or Craftsmen, Who Happen To Be More Intellectual Than Professors.

When You Look At A Corporation, Just Like When You Look At A Slave Owner, You Want To Distinguish Between The Institution And The Individual. So Slavery, For Example, Or Other Forms Of Tyranny, Are Inherently Monstrous. The Individuals Participating In Them May Be The Nicest Guys You Can Imagine.

Latin America Has Much Richer Resources. You'd Expect It To Be Far More Advanced Than East Asia, But It Had The Disadvantage Of Being Under Imperialist Wings.

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.

Governments Regard Their Own Citizens As Their Main Enemy, And They Have To Be - Protect Themselves. That's Why You Have State Secret Laws. Citizens Are Not Supposed To Know What Their Government Is Doing To Them.

The Good News From The U.s. Military Survey Of Focus Groups Is That Iraqis Do Accept The Nuremberg Principles. They Understand That Sectarian Violence And The Other Postwar Horrors Are Contained Within The Supreme International Crime Committed By The Invaders.

There's A Lot Of Fuss On The Left About Election Irregularities, Like, You Know, The Voting Machines Were Tampered With, They Didn't Count The Votes Right, And So On. That's All Accurate And Of Some Importance, But Of Far More Importance Is The Fact That Elections Just Don't Take Place, Not In Any Meaningful Sense Of The Term 'Election.'

There's Very Little Dislike Of Americans In The World, Shown By Repeated Polls, And The Dissatisfaction - That Is, The Hatred And The Anger - They Come From Acceptance Of American Values, Not A Rejection Of Them, And Recognition That They're Rejected By The U.s. Government And By U.s. Elites, Which Does Lead To Hatred And Anger.

The List Of U.s. Vetoes At The Security Council To Protect Israeli Aggression And Occupation Is Huge.

The United States Is A Violent Military State. It's Been Involved In Military Action All Over The Place.

Two Days After The Boston Marathon Bombings, There Was A Drone Strike In Yemen Attacking A Peaceful Village, Which Killed A Target Who Could Very Easily Have Been Apprehended. But, Of Course, It Is Just Easier To Terrorise People. The Drones Are A Terrorist Weapon; They Not Only Kill Targets But Also Terrorise Other People.

The Effort To Try To Present The Social Security Program As If It's A Major Problem, That's Just A Hidden Way Of Trying To Undermine And Destroy It.

No Matter What Engineering Field You're In, You Learn The Same Basic Science And Mathematics. And Then Maybe You Learn A Little Bit About How To Apply It.