Quotes from Noam Chomsky

To cite the facts of history is to fall prey to 'moral equivalence,' or 'political correctness,' or 'the error of of atheism,' or one of the other misdeeds concocted to guard against the sins of understanding and insight into the real world.

In mathematics, in physics, people are concerned with what you say, not with your certification. But in order to speak about social reality, you must have the proper credentials, particularly if you depart from the accepted framework of thinking. Generally speaking, it seems fair to say that the richer the intellectual substance of a field, the less there is a concern for credentials, and the greater is concern for content.

Well, I'm not sure the New York Times was consciously trying to trivialise me, but the effect of it is to put everything in the same category as the gossip you read in the magazines you pick up at supermarket counters. I was asked, for example, why I thought there were so many euphemisms for genitalia . It's not a serious question. Whatever the purpose of such a tone is, the effect is to make it appear that anyone who departs from orthodox political doctrine is in some ways laughable.

Thinking is a human feature. Will AI someday really think? That's like asking if submarines swim. If you call it swimming then robots will think, yes.

Genocide is an invidious word that officials apply readily to cases of victimization in enemy states, but rarely if ever to similar or worse cases of victimization by the United States itself or allied regimes.

The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values.

there has been a deepening recognition among elites in the West that as you begin to lose the power to control people by force, you have to start to control what they think. And in the United States, that recognition has reached its apogee.

But entertainment has the merit not only of being better suited to helping sell goods; it is an effective vehicle for hidden ideological messages.24 Furthermore, in a system of high and growing inequality, entertainment is the contemporary equivalent of the Roman "games of the circus" that diverts the public from politics and generates a political apathy that is helpful to preservation of the status quo.

Large corporations have resources to influence media and overwhelm the political process, and do so accordingly.

There's an awful lot you can find in the press. If you do what you really ought to do, start by reading every article from the end, back to the front; most of the lies are up in the front. Turns out there's a lot of stuff back there.

Another problem with the official definitions of terror is that it follows from them that the US is a leading terrorist state.

Social action must be animated by a vision of a future society, and by explicit judgments of value concerning the character of this future society.

So I think it's completely realistic and rational to work within structures to which you are opposed, because by doing so you can help to move to a situation where then you can challenge those structures.

You've got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they're properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous, because they're not competent to think.

One should attend carefully to the fear and desperation of the powerful. They understand very well the potential reach of the ultimate weapon, and only hope that those who seek a more free and just world will not gain the same understanding and put it effectively to use.

Corporations with their political allies are waging an unrelenting class war against working people.

if we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us. Those who do not rise to the minimal moral level of applying to themselves the standards they apply to others -- more stringent ones, in fact -- plainly cannot be taken seriously when they speak of appropriateness of response; or of right and wrong, good and evil

Speaking truth to power makes no sense. There's no point in speaking truth to Henry Kissinger, he knows it already. Instead speak truth to the powerless. Or better, with the powerless. Then they'll act to dismantle illegitimate power.

Now, where are [Mexican illegal immigrants] fleeing from? Mostly from Central America, where they're fleeing from the results of our policies.

The advertising industry's prime task is to ensure that uninformed consumers make irrational choices, thus undermining market theories that are based on just the opposite.

Bir grup güçlendikçe, kendi ç?karlar?na hizmet edebilecek politikac?lar? ön plana ç?kar?r.

The rest of the population ought to be deprived of any form of organization, because organization just causes trouble. People have to be atomized and segregated and alone. They're not supposed to organize, because then they might be something beyond spectators of action.

And the spectators must not be allowed to see too much. President Obama has set new standards in safeguarding this principle. He has, in fact, punished more whistle-blowers than all previous presidents combined, a real achievement for an administration that came to office promising transparency.

The issue is whether we want to live in a free society or whether we want to live under what amounts to a form of self-imposed totalitarianism, with the bewildered herd marginalized, directed elsewhere, terrified, screaming patriotic slogans, fearing for their lives, and admiring with awe the leader who saved them from destruction, while the educated masses goose-step on command and repeat the slogans they're supposed to repeat and the society deteriorates at home.