Quotes from Noam Chomsky

Though it is obligatory to hail our leaders for their sincere dedication to bringing democracy to a suffering world, perhaps in an excess of idealism, the more serious scholar/advocates of the mission of "democracy promotion" recognize that there is a "strong line of continuity" running through all administrations: the United States supports democracy if and only if it conforms to U.S. strategic and economic interests.

One of the NECESSARILY ILLUSIONS for the general public is that we live in a capitalist economy, but the rich don't believe that for a minute. They insist on a powerful state to protect them from market discipline. So if Goldman Sachs makes a risky transaction, they're basically protected. If it crashes, they can run to the nanny state with their cap in hand and get bailed out.

The U.S. media do not function in the manner of the propaganda system of a totalitarian state. Rather, they permit indeed encourage spirited debate, criticism, and dissent, as long as these remain faithfully within the system of presuppositions and principles that constitute an elite consensus, a system so powerful as to be internalized largely without awareness

From anti-semite to self-hating jew, all in one day

The reasoning throughout is straightforward, and is in full accord with what Bush calls "new thinking in the law of war," which takes international law and treaties to be "private contractual rules" that the more powerful party "is free to apply or disregard as it sees fit": sternly enforced to ensure a safer world for investors, but quaint and obsolete when they constrain Washington's resort to aggression and other crimes.

The information sometimes is reported, but the media isn't presenting it.67

Anybody who wants to be President, you should right away say, I don't want to hear that guy anymore. WOMAN: I'm sorry? You should say, I don't want to listen to that person anymore. Anybody who wants to become your leader, you should say, I don't want to follow. That's like a rule of thumb which almost never fails.

It means that students, if they don't come from very wealthy families, they're going to leave college with big debts. And if you have a big debt, you're trapped. I mean, maybe you wanted to become a public interest lawyer, but you're going to have to go into a corporate law firm to pay off those debts. And by the time you're part of the culture, you're not going to get out of it again.

Language has a creative character: it is typically innovative without bounds, appropriate to circumstance but not caused by them – a crucial distinction – and can engender thoughts in others that they recognise they could have expressed themselves.

Communication is not a yes-or-no but rather a more-or-less affair.

Then comes the Bush and Obama bailout, which reconstructed the powerful institutions—the perpetrators—and left everyone else floating. There was severe harm to people, who had houses taken away from them, jobs diminished, and so on. That's where we are now. It was done with impunity, and they're building up to the next one.

I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

There's plenty of challenging, gratifying, interesting, productive workaround for people to do, and there are plenty of people who want to do it?they simply aren't being allowed that opportunity under the current economic system.

You cannot control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption.

Small wonder that President Obama advises us to look forward, not backward—a convenient doctrine for those who hold the clubs. Those who are beaten by them tend to see the world differently, much to our annoyance.

Because you cannot study the acquisition or use of language in an intelligent manner without having some idea about this language which is acquired or utilized.

Pandangan monolitik media-media besar yang tampil secara konsisten harus dicurigai sebagai upaya untuk mempertahankan status quo yang ada.

That's essentially neoliberalism. It has this dual character, which goes right back in economic history. One set of rules for the rich. Opposite set of rules for the poor.

If you take the Fourteenth Amendment literally, then no undocumented alien can be deprived of rights if they're a person. Well, the courts, in their wisdom over the years, have carved that away and said they're not persons. Undocumented aliens who are living here and building your buildings, cleaning your lawns, and so on, they're not persons, but General Electric is a person, an immortal, super powerful person.

A major reason for the concentrated, almost fanatic attack on unions and organized labor is they are a democratizing force. They provide a barrier that defends workers' rights, but also popular rights generally. That interferes with the prerogatives and power of those who own and manage the society.

Reigning doctrines are often called a double standard.The term is misleading.It is more accurate to describe them as a single standard,clear and unmistakable,the standard that Adam Smith called the vile maxim of the masters of mankind: ...All for ourselves,and nothing for other people. Much has changed since his day,but the vile maxim flourishes.

I started with reading Chomsky and slowly became very interested in anything that had to do with Israel/Palestine. Reading Edward Said, Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani, John Berger, Tanya Reinhart, Ilan Pappé, Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, Kurt Vonnegut, Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein . . . all became part of my daily routine.

Thats the danger of democracy: If organizations can develop, if people are no longer just glued to the tube, you may have all these funny thoughts arising in their heads, like sickly inhibitions against the use of military force. That has to be overcome, bit hasn't been over come.

The more you learn, the more you realize the less you know. You think you're approaching some kind of horizon, but in fact the horizon is receding, and the more you learn, the more you see that horizon is very far away. Life would be pretty boring if we understood everything so better that we don't understand everything