States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.
NOAM CHOMSKYThe Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor led to many very good things.
More Noam Chomsky Quotes
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Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
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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 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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The elections are run by the same industries that sell toothpaste on television.
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Every time there has been an effort by the Haitian people to overcome the misery and poverty that comes from 200 years of bitter attacks, really bitter, the U.S. steps in and blocks it.
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But China, they’ve been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don’t see any need to.
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Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.
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You cannot control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption.
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Perhaps the most striking assault on the foundations of traditional liberties is a little-known case brought to the Supreme Court by the Obama administration, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project.
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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.
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There’s a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.
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There’s never been anything like the so-called Vietnam Syndrome: it’s mostly a fabrication.
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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.
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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.
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The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn’t pay his protection money.
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The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.
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Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.
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It is pretty ironic that the so-called ‘least advanced’ people are the ones taking the lead in trying to protect all of us.
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Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.
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That’s why you have state secret laws. Citizens are not supposed to know what their government is doing to them.
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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.
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But I would not intend this to imply that in all imaginable circumstances one must, necessarily, act in accordance with this general responsibility.
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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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It’s dangerous when people are willing to give up their privacy.
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I would feel no hesitation in saying that it is the responsibility of a decent human being to give assistance to a child who is being attacked by a rabid dog.
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There’s very little dislike of Americans in the world, shown by repeated polls, and the dissatisfaction – that is, the hatred and the anger.
NOAM CHOMSKY