It's perfectly obvious that there is some genetic factor that distinguishes humans from other animals and that it is language-specific. The theory of that genetic component, whatever it turns out to be, is what is called universal grammar.

If [climate change ] became a serious proposal in the United States, there would be a huge propaganda onslaught by the business community, the energy corporations and many others, to try to frighten the population into opposing it - claiming that if they have it, all sorts of terrible things will happen, like you won't be able to heat your home, or whatever the story is.

Of course, we [ with Edward Herman] have a purpose: namely, to encourage readers to undertake what might be called "a course in intellectual self-defense," and to suggest ways to proceed; in other words, to help people undermine the dedicated efforts to "manufacture consent" and to turn them into passive objects rather than agents who control their own fate.

The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.

Academics are not necessarily nice people.

Jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you're trying to organize a mass base of support for policies that are really intended to crush them.

There are many terrorist states in the world, but the United States is unusual in that it is officially committed to international terrorism.