Noam Chomsky Quotes

The actual consequences of Plan Colombia are to devastate peasant communities, which have been driven to drug production. These peasants have no particular desire to grow coca, but their other means of livelihood have been wiped out.

Trump keeps the spotlight on himself with one act after another, assuming correctly that yesterday's antics will be swept aside by today's.

In some ways, [the student anti-sweatshop movement] is like the anti-apartheid movement, except that in this case its striking at the core of the relations of exploitation. Much of this was initiated by Charlie Kernaghan of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights.

Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid-twentieth century.

The internet is something created largely by public funding.

There are two parties, so-called, but they're really factions of the same party, the Business Party.

In fact, what were called the socialist countries in Eastern Europe were the most anti-socialist systems in the world. Workers had more rights in the United States and England than they had in Russia, and it was somehow still called socialism.

United States has comparative advantage in military force. It tends to react to anything at first with military force, that's what it's good at. And I think they overdid it. There was more military force than was necessary.

The communists were mainly responsible for the destruction of the Spanish anarchists. Not just in Catalonia - the communist armies mainly destroyed the collectives elsewhere.

I grew up in that, when I was a kid. My friends and I used to play cowboys and Indians. We were cowboys killing the Indians, following the Wild West stories. All of this combined into a very strange culture, which is frightened.

History records endless struggles to enlarge those realms, inspiring ones; it also records painful reversals and setbacks.

The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.

The truth of the matter is that about 99 percent of teaching is making the students feel interestedin the material. Then the other 1 percent has to do with your methods. And that's not just true of languages. It's true of every subject.

One of the real problems of society is that its far too atomized, what sociologists call secondary associations.

We 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.

Hamas must agree to first recognize Israel, second to end all violence, third to accept past agreements. Try to find a mention of the fact that the United States and Israel reject all three of those. They obviously don't recognize Palestine, they certainly don't withdraw the use of violence or the threat of it - in fact they insist on it - and they don't accept past agreements, including the road map.

It’s a shameful moment for U.S. media when it insists on being subservient to the grotesque propaganda agencies of a violent, aggressive state.

We're human beings; we're not robots. And face-to-face contact is something totally different than typing a text message and then forgetting about it.

I am not too happy with terms like “the left”, to be honest. And I don’t use it much….if by “the left” you mean people who are committed to peace and justice and freedom and so on, there can’t be elements of the left opposed to workers’ movement, at least under that definition.

We have a record for Nawaz Sharif but not the others. And judging by the record, it's pretty hard to be optimistic. His [Sharif's] previous governments were very corrupt and regressive in the policies pursued.

The idea that Hezbollah is acting as an agent of Iran is very dubious. It's not accepted by specialists on Iran or specialists on Hezbollah. But it's the party line. Or sometimes you can put in Syria, i.e. "Syrian-supported Hezbollah," but since Syria is of less interest now you have to emphasize Iranian support.

In 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.

You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.

If there are lessons to be drawn from the sciences, then that should be the concern of everyone, including scientists to the extent that they can make a contribution.

It's a near miracle that nuclear war has so far been avoided.

In fact, by universal grammar I mean just that system of principles and structures that are the prerequisites for acquisition of language, and to which every language necessarily conforms.

It's a class war, and a war on young people too... that's why tuition is rising so rapidly. There's no real economic reason for that. It's a technique of control and indoctrination. And this is really the first organized, significant reaction to it, which is important.

I don't think that any deal was needed: Iran was not a threat. Even if Iran were a threat, there was a very easy way to handle it - by establishing a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, which is something that nearly everyone in the world wants.

The indoctrination is so deep that educated people think they’re being objective.

You might recall, perhaps, that we were probably the only commentators to rely on the most knowledgeable source, State Department intelligence.

Should people be mere "interested spectators of action," not "participants," restricted to lending their weight periodically to one or another sector of the "responsible men," as advocates of "manufacture of consent" have recommended? Or should their rights transcend these highly restricted bounds?

The crime of liberation theology was that it takes the Gospels seriously. That's unacceptable. The Gospels are radical pacifist material, if you take a look at them . . . Liberation theology, in Brazil particularly, brought the actual Gospel to peasants. They said, let's read what the Gospels say, and try to act on the principles they describe. That was the major crime that set off the Reagan wars of terror.

Peace is preferable to war. But it’s not an absolute value, and so we always ask, “What kind of peace?

The structure of language determines not only thought, but reality itself.

Remember that in any major nuclear war, the first strike destroys the country that attacks; it's been known for years. The first strike of a major power is very likely to cause what's called nuclear winter, leads to global famine for years and everything's basically gone. Some survivors straggling around. Could [Donald Trump] do it? Who knows.

The Ottoman Empire . . . The rulers in Turkey were fortunately so corrupt that they left people alone pretty much - were mostly interested in robbing them - and they left them alone to run their own affairs . . . with a lot of local self determination.

We're looking at the dawn of a new arms race. For example, Germany technically opposes the US space militarization program, but is bound to get involved. Otherwise it will be left behind in the development of advanced technology. Germany understands that very well. The US understands it too, and they fully expect that Germany and other countries that they want on board will go along with the program.

Labor has been severely undermined, but that's happened before. In the 1920s, the labor movement was virtually crushed, in large part by Wilson's Red Scare, but it dramatically revived in the 1930s. It spearheaded the social-democratic New-Deal style changes which were beneficial to the country - not sufficient, but beneficial. That could happen again.

You know, people talk about [Richard] Nixon's "madman theory." We don't really know much about that. It was in memoirs, by somebody else.

Private companies can make a personal profile, direct you to things - they will say - that you would be interested in, but that's their choice not your choice.

The Occupy movement did create spontaneously communities that taught people something: you can be in a supportive community of mutual aid and cooperation and develop your own health system and library and have open space for democratic discussion and participation. Communities like that are really important.

[James] Madison pointed out in the discussion of the constitutional debates - the constitutional convention - that democracy would be a danger. He used England of course as the model and said suppose that in England everyone had the free right to vote; the poor, the propertyless - who are the great majority - would use their voting power to take away the rights of property owners to carry out what we would call land reform.

The Irish sea is a chasm, and it just depends who's been holding the whip for 800 years and who's been under it for 800 years.

One of the greatest dangers is secular religion - state worship.

There are people on the left who say, Look, we can't let these atrocities go on, so let's enter the war and get rid of Bashar Assad. The problem with that is you get into a nuclear war with Russia. And Syria gets wiped out along with everything else. So, it's fine to say, OK, let's stop the crimes, but how exactly?

The US is the wrecking machine that is destroying everything. The world is hoping that China will somehow come to the rescue.

He who controls the media controls the minds of the public.

If the NAACP were to impose a control of something towards all, then I would staunchly oppose it.