Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.
NOAM CHOMSKYIf we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.
More Noam Chomsky Quotes
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Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.
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In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category.
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Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions.
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You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.
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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.
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As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.
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International affairs is very much run like the mafia.
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I stated that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are ‘among the most unspeakable crimes in history.
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There are two problems for our species’ survival – nuclear war and environmental catastrophe – and we’re hurtling towards them. Knowingly.
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The polls show that concern over inequality among the general public rose pretty sharply after the Occupy movement started, very probably as a consequence. And there are other policy issues that came to the fore, which are significant.
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If you’re in favour of any policy – reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever – if you’re at least minimally moral, it’s because you think it’s somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.
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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.
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The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn’t betray it I’d be ashamed of myself.
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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.
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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.
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For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.
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The United States has even gone so far as to veto Security Council resolutions calling on all states to observe international law. That was in the 1980s under Reagan.
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France had a policy, initiated by General de Gaulle, of trying to turn Europe into what was then called a ‘third force,’ independent of the two superpowers, so Europe should pursue an independent course.
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In Kosovo, the U.S. has chosen a course of action that escalates atrocities and violence.
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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.
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Romania, which had the worst dictator in Eastern Europe, Ceausescu, he was a darling of the West.
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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.
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I would appear on Fox News more easily than I would NPR.
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Remember, weapons of mass destruction don’t mean missiles.
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Dissident intellectuals aren’t all beautiful.
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In the case of the environment, there’s no one to bail it out.
NOAM CHOMSKY