Quotes from Noam Chomsky

Kant's insistence, in his defense of the French Revolution, that freedom is the precondition for acquiring the maturity for freedom, not a gift to be granted when such maturity is achieved.

In fact, what's been happening is that there's been a flow of investor funds to the United States, to Treasury securities, which are regarded as a safe haven now, which has a mixed effect for the United States.3 It tends over time to raise the value of the dollar and harm exports. So it's not good for a healthy economy.

Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they can't afford the time to think.

quién gobierna el mundo?, puede que queramos replantearla de esta forma: ¿qué principios y valores gobiernan el mundo? Esa pregunta debería ser la más importante en la mente de los ciudadanos de los países ricos y poderosos, que disfrutan de un inusual legado de libertad, privilegios y oportunidades gracias a las luchas de aquellos que lucharon por ello antes y que ahora se enfrentan a funestas opciones para responder a retos de gran importancia humana.

however, is that there is no alternative. Communist societies, social democracies, and even modest social welfare states like the United States have all failed, the neoliberals proclaim, and their citizens have accepted neoliberalism as the only feasible course.

The sign of a truly totalitarian culture is that important truths simply lack cognitive meaning and are interpretable only at the level of 'Fuck You', so they can then elicit a perfectly predictable torrent of abuse in response. We've long ago reached that level.

The spectrum of discussion reflects what a propaganda model would predict: …the implicit message: thus far, and no further.

A consistent materialist would consider it as self-evident that the mind has very important innate structures, physically realized in some manner. Why should it be otherwise?

though of course the weak would have to be insane to implement their rights

truisms at least have the merit of being true, which distinguishes them from a good deal of political discourse. And

an age of unparalleled economic inequality, growing authoritarianism, and social Darwinism, with a left that has turned its back on the class struggle.

A well-known Egyptian academic traces hostility towards the US to its support for 'every possible anti-democratic government in the Arab-Islamic world..... ... When we hear American officials speaking of freedom, democracy and such values, they make terms like these sound obscene.

Yeah, it's a bum rap, basically?it's like referring to Soviet-style bureaucracy as socialism, or any other term of discourse that's been given a second meaning for the purpose of ideological warfare. I mean, chaos is a meaning of the word, but it's not a meaning that has any relevance to social thought. Anarchy as a social philosophy has never meant chaos?in fact, anarchists have typically believed in a highly organized society, just one that's organized democratically from below.

appeal to non-business interests) and let them be effective. Although there is marked and frequently observed dissatisfaction with the Republicans and Democrats, electoral politics is one area where notions of competition and free choice have little meaning.

Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.

A few days after my new state occupied my village, I became a prisoner of war rather than a citizen.

There is no sensible way to invoke functional notions as explanatory concepts at the synchronic or ontogenetic level.

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

An Egyptian writer added that 'living in a country with an atrocious human rights record that also happens to be strategically vital to US interests is an illuminating lesson in moral hypocrisy and political double standards.

Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless. In

Cyrus Scofield, a preacher from Dallas, Texas, was another link in the chain that connected missionary theology on both sides of the Atlantic. This violent priest produced an annotated, fundamentalist version of the Bible that was published by Oxford University Press in 1909. It was, in a way, the most explicit sketch of the three prongs that form the basis for U.S. policy today: the return of the Jews, the decline of Islam, and the rising fortunes of the United States as a world power.

There is no contradiction here. People live and suffer and endure in the real world of existing society, and any decent person should favor employing what means are available to safeguard and benefit them, even if a long-term goal is to displace these devices and construct preferable alternatives. In

Median real income is below its level of twenty-five years ago. For males, median real income is below what it was in 1968.

Terrorism, he said is 'a reaction to the injustice in the region's domestic politics, inflicted in large part by the US.