The intellectual is an individual with a specific public role in society that cannot be reduced simply to . . a faceless professional.
Noam ChomskyAmerica has always been the richest and most secure, and sometimes the most dangerous country in the world. In the early years, the danger was to everybody near us, slaves, Native Americans, Mexicans. It finally expanded in 1898 to the Caribbean, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines.
Noam ChomskyWe are hurtling towards self-destruction at an alarming rate thanks chiefly to an advertising and propaganda system that goads people from infancy towards apathy, isolation, passivity, helplessness and separation.
Noam ChomskyAnyone can be a moral individual, concerned with human rights and problems; but only a college professor, a trained expert, can solve technical problems by 'sophisticated' methods. Ergo, it is only problems of the latter sort that are important or real.
Noam ChomskyRight at the beginning of all of this [Ukraine to join NATO], serious senior statesmen, people like [George] Kennan for example and others warned that the expansion of NATO to the east is going to cause a disaster. I mean, it's like having the Warsaw Pact on the Mexican border. It's inconceivable. And others, senior people warned about this, but policymakers didn't care. Just go ahead.
Noam Chomsky