Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.
NOAM CHOMSKYAll 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.
More Noam Chomsky Quotes
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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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The drones are a terrorist weapon; they not only kill targets but also terrorise other people.
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Rational discussion is useful only when there is a significant base of shared assumptions.
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Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
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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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The United States is afraid of China; it is not a military threat to anyone and is the least aggressive of all the major military powers.
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There wouldn’t have been an international global solidarity movement, for instance, without the events of 1968. It was enormous, in terms of human rights, ethnic rights, a concern for the environment, too.
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The elections are run by the same industries that sell toothpaste on television.
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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.
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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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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.
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NATO’s essentially run by the United States.
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There’s a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.
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Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.
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Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.
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It followed international law and treaty obligations. It collected evidence, brought the evidence to the highest existing tribunal, the International Court of Justice, and received a verdict – which, of course, the U.S. dismissed with contempt.
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Anti-Americanism is a pure totalitarian concept. The very notion is idiotic.
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Remember, weapons of mass destruction don’t mean missiles.
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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 money in politics is a cash cow for the media.
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It is also a course of action that strikes a blow against the regime of international order, but which offers the weak at least some protection from predatory states.
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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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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.’
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Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.
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The childcare tax credit makes some sense.
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The Republican Party has become overwhelmingly so extreme that it’s hardly a traditional political party anymore.
NOAM CHOMSKY