U.S. has no feudal background, so institutions that remained in place in Europe did not remain in place here.
Noam ChomskyWhile I think in principle people should not have irrational beliefs, I should say that as a matter of fact, it is people who hold what I regard as completely irrational beliefs who are among the most effective moral actors in the world, in many respects. They're among the worst, but also among the best, even though the moral beliefs are ostensibly the same.
Noam ChomskyMoral cowardice and intellectual corruption are the natural concomitants of unchallenged privilege.
Noam ChomskyRonald Reagan in the US was not a particularly popular president, but after his death sectors of wealth and power created a huge propaganda campaign that converted this disgraceful figure into a semi-divinity.
Noam ChomskyI think the most important work that is going on has to do with the search for very general and abstract features of what is sometimes called universal grammar: general properties of language that reflect a kind of biological necessity rather than logical necessity; that is, properties of language that are not logically necessary for such a system but which are essential invariant properties of human language and are known without learning. We know these properties but we don't learn them. We simply use our knowledge of these properties as the basis for learning.
Noam ChomskyIn the mid to late nineteenth century, the gun manufacturers recognized that they had a limited market. Remember that this is a capitalist society, you've got to expand your market. They were selling guns to the military. That's a pretty limited market. What about all the rest of the people? So what started was all kinds of fantastic stories about Wyatt Earp and the gunmen and the Wild West, how exciting it was to have these guys with guns defending themselves against all sorts of things.
Noam Chomsky