To achieve respectability, to be admitted to the debate, they must accept without question or inquiry the fundamental doctrine that the state is benevolent, governed by the loftiest intentions, adopting a defensive stance, not an actor in world affairs but only reacting to the crimes of others...If even the harshest of critics tacitly adopt these premises, then the ordinary person may ask, who am I to disagree?
Noam ChomskyThe whole infrastructure of air travel was, and is, part of government policy. It is not a natural development of a free economic system - at least not in the way that is claimed. The same is true of the roads, of course.
Noam ChomskyYou keep plugging away--that's the way social change takes place. That's the way every social change in history has taken place: by a lot of people, who nobody ever heard of, doing work.
Noam ChomskyIn the American Jewish community, there is little willingness to face the fact that the Palestinian Arabs have suffered a monstrous historical injustice . . . Until this is recognized, discussion of the Middle East crisis cannot even begin.
Noam ChomskyGo back to the Bible, the Old Testament. I mean there were people who we would call intelectuals, there, they were called prophets, but they were basically intelectuals: they were people who were doing critical, geopolitical analysis, talking about the decisions of the king were going to lead to destruction; condemning inmorality, calling for justice for widows and orphans. What we would call dissident intelectuals. Were they nicely treated? No, they were driven into the desert, they were imprisoned, they were denounced. They were intelectuals who conformed.
Noam ChomskyIf something is repeated over and over as obvious, the chances are that it is obviously false.
Noam ChomskyMost of us who were opposed to the war, especially in the early '60's - the war we were opposed to was the war on South Vietnam which destroyed South Vietnam's rural society. The South was devastated. But now anyone who opposed this atrocity is regarded as having defended North Vietnam. And that's part of the effort to present the war as if it were a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam with the United States helping the South. Of course it's fabrication. But it's "official truth" now.
Noam Chomsky