There is no western concern for issues of aggression, atrocities, human rights abuses and so on if there's a profit to be made from them

The intellectual world is deeply conformist... We talk a lot about the crimes of others. When it comes to our own crimes, we are nationalists in the Orwellian sense.

Precisely constructed models for linguistic structure can play an important role, both negative and positive, in the process of discovery itself. By pushing a precise but inadequate formulation to an unacceptable conclusion, we can often expose the exact source of this inadequacy and, consequently, gain a deep understanding of the linguistic data. More positively, a formalized theory may automatically provide solutions for many problems other than those for which it was explicitly designed.

Haiti, which has been the main target of US intervention throughout the 20th century, is the poorest. And Guatemala, which is maybe the third major target of US intervention, probably ranks third poorest.

The Bush administration has created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. This should've been one of the easiest military occupations in history and they succeeded in turning it into one of the worst military disasters in history. They can't control it and it's almost impossible for them to get out for reasons you can't discuss in the United States because to discuss the reasons why they can't get out would be to concede the reasons why they invaded.

Most of intellectuals are false prophets, flatterers of the court. The real prophets are the exception and treated badly. How badly they're treated depends on the society. Like in Eastern Europe, they were treated very badly. In Latin America, they were slaughtered.

The reason academic disputes are so vicious is that so little is at stake.