Quotes by Noam Chomsky

Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.

— Noam Chomsky

Wisdom

The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.

— Noam Chomsky

Education

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

— Noam Chomsky

Freedom

With the development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system of injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order.

— Noam Chomsky

Life

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

— Noam Chomsky

Wisdom

I like the cold weather. It means you get work done.

— Noam Chomsky

Success

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

— Noam Chomsky

Courage

History shows that, more often than not, loss of sovereignty leads to liberalisation imposed in the interests of the powerful.

— Noam Chomsky

Wisdom

International affairs is very much run like the mafia. The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn't pay his protection money. You have to have obedience; otherwise, the idea can spread that you don't have to listen to the orders, and it can spread to important places.

— Noam Chomsky

Wisdom

If workers are more insecure, that's very 'healthy' for the society, because if workers are insecure, they won't ask for wages, they won't go on strike, they won't call for benefits; they'll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that's optimal for corporations' economic health.

— Noam Chomsky

Success

If you are giving a graduate course you don't try to impress the students with oratory, you try to challenge them, get them to question you.

— Noam Chomsky

Wisdom

There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster;' instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.

— Noam Chomsky

Wisdom

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.

— Noam Chomsky

Life

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

— Noam Chomsky

Wisdom

Debt is a trap, especially student debt, which is enormous, far larger than credit card debt. It's a trap for the rest of your life because the laws are designed so that you can't get out of it. If a business, say, gets in too much debt, it can declare bankruptcy, but individuals can almost never be relieved of student debt through bankruptcy.

— Noam Chomsky

Life

If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does, he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees.

— Noam Chomsky

Success

There is massive propaganda for everyone to consume. Consumption is good for profits and consumption is good for the political establishment.

— Noam Chomsky

Wisdom

Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.

— Noam Chomsky

Wisdom

If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.

— Noam Chomsky

Wisdom

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.

— Noam Chomsky

Wisdom

I stated that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are 'among the most unspeakable crimes in history.' I took no position on just where they stand on the scale of horrors relative to Auschwitz, the bombing of Chungking, Lidice, and so on.

— Noam Chomsky

Wisdom

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

— Noam Chomsky

Wisdom

There are two problems for our species' survival - nuclear war and environmental catastrophe - and we're hurtling towards them. Knowingly.

— Noam Chomsky

Wisdom

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!

— Noam Chomsky

Wisdom