Noam Chomsky Quotes And Sayings

Civil Disobedience's Main Goal Typically Is To Try To Arouse And Inspire Others To Join And Do Something. Well, Sometimes That Is A Good Tactic, Sometimes Not.

Anarchism Means All Sort Of Things To Different People, But The Traditional Anarchists' Movements Assumed That There'd Be A Highly Organized Society, Just One Organized From Below With Direct Participation And So On.

To Say That The United States Has Pursued Diplomacy With North Korea Is A Little Bit Misleading. It Did Under The Clinton Administration, Though Neither Side Completely Lived Up To Their Obligations. Clinton Didn't Do What Was Promised, Nor Did North Korea, But They Were Making Progress.

A Tremendous Amount Of The Entrepreneurial Initiative, If You Want To Call It That, Comes From The Dynamic State Sector On Which Most Of The Economy Relies To Socialize Costs And Risks And Privatize Eventual Profit. And That's Achieved By, If You Like, Advertising.

If A Child From An Amazonian Hunter-gatherer Tribe Comes To Boston, Is Raised In Boston, That Child Will Be Indistinguishable In Language Capacities From My Children Growing Up Here, And Vice Versa.

In 1993, Israel And North Korea Were Moving Towards An Agreement In Which North Korea Would Stop Sending Any Missiles Or Military Technology To The Middle East And Israel Would Recognize That Country. President Clinton Intervened And Blocked It.

I've Been Interested In Japan Since The 1930s, When I Read About Japan's Vicious Crimes In Manchuria And China.

I Do Think That Magna Carta And International Law Are Worth Paying Some Attention To.

American Decline Is Real, Though The Apocalyptic Vision Reflects The Familiar Ruling Class Perception That Anything Short Of Total Control Amounts To Total Disaster.

The Events Of October 1962 Are Widely Hailed As Kennedy's Finest Hour.

Concentration Of Wealth Yields Concentration Of Political Power. And Concentration Of Political Power Gives Rise To Legislation That Increases And Accelerates The Cycle.

Significant Anniversaries Are Solemnly Commemorated - Japan's Attack On The U.s. Naval Base At Pearl Harbor, For Example.

Reparations - Not Just Aid - Should Be Provided By Those Responsible For Devastating Iraqi Civilian Society By Cruel Sanctions And Military Actions, And - Together With Other Criminal States - For Supporting Saddam Hussein Through His Worst Atrocities And Beyond. That Is The Minimum That Honesty Requires.

Nineteen Sixty-eight Was One Exciting Moment In A Much Larger Movement. It Spawned A Whole Range Of Movements. There Wouldn't Have Been An International Global Solidarity Movement, For Instance, Without The Events Of 1968. It Was Enormous, In Terms Of Human Rights, Ethnic Rights, A Concern For The Environment, Too.

Iran Has Little Capacity To Deploy Force. Its Strategic Doctrines Are Defensive, Designed To Deter Invasion Long Enough For Diplomacy To Set It.

Some International Law Specialists Compare The Invasion Of Iraq To The 'Crimes Against The Peace' For Which Nazi Leaders Were Indicted At Nuremberg.

For A Privileged Minority, Western Democracy Provides The Leisure, The Facilities, And The Training To Seek The Truth Lying Hidden Behind The Veil Of Distortion And Misrepresentation, Ideology And Class Interest, Through Which The Events Of Current History Are Presented To Us.

In Ideal Form Of Social Control Is An Atomised Collection Of Individuals Focused On Their Own Narrow Concern, Lacking The Kinds Of Organisations In Which They Can Gain Information, Develop And Articulate Their Thoughts, And Act Constructively To Achieve Common Ends.

If We Don't Believe In Freedom Of Expression For People We Despise, We Don't Believe In It At All.

As Bromberger Observed, Rules Are Understood To Be Elements Of The Computational Systems That Determine The Sound And Meaning Of The Infinite Array Of Expressions Of A Language; The Information So Derived Is Accessed By Other Systems In Language Use.

There Is No Plausible Theory Under Which The Record Of The Pentagon Papers Can Be Interpreted As Relating To The National Defense.

Presented With The Claims Of Nineteenth-century Racist Anthropology, A Rational Person Will Ask Two Sorts Of Questions: 'What Is The Scientific Status Of The Claims?' 'What Social Or Ideological Needs Do They Serve?'

Withdrawal Of American Troops Must Be A Unilateral Act, As The Invasion Of Vietnam By The American Government Was A Unilateral Act In The First Place.

After The First International Days Of Protest In October, 1965, Senator Mansfield Criticized The 'Sense Of Utter Irresponsibility' Shown By The Demonstrators.

To Summarize, Draft Resistance Can Make Use Of The Inegalitarian Nature Of American Society As A Technique For Increasing The Cost Of American Aggression, And It Threatens Values That Are Important To Those In A Decision-making Position.

States Are Not Moral Agents, People Are, And Can Impose Moral Standards On Powerful Institutions.

I Have Often Thought That If A Rational Fascist Dictatorship Were To Exist, Then It Would Choose The American System.

The Principle That Human Nature, In Its Psychological Aspects, Is Nothing More Than A Product Of History And Given Social Relations Removes All Barriers To Coercion And Manipulation By The Powerful.

Resistance Is Feasible Even For Those Who Are Not Heroes By Nature, And It Is An Obligation, I Believe, For Those Who Fear The Consequences And Detest The Reality Of The Attempt To Impose American Hegemony.

The Bible Is One Of The Most Genocidal Books In History.

Human Language Appears To Be A Unique Phenomenon, Without Significant Analogue In The Animal World.

If You Are Working 50 Hours A Week In A Factory, You Don't Have Time To Read 10 Newspapers A Day And Go Back To Declassified Government Archives. But Such People May Have Far-reaching Insights Into The Way The World Works.

I Don't Have Any Oratory Skills. But I Would Not Use Them If I Had.

Concentration Of Executive Power, Unless It's Very Temporary And For Specific Circumstances, Let's Say Fighting World War Two, It's An Assault On Democracy.

If You Are Giving A Graduate Course You Don't Try To Impress The Students With Oratory, You Try To Challenge Them, Get Them To Question You.

Real Popular Culture Is Folk Art - Coalminers' Songs And So Forth.

There Are Two Problems For Our Species' Survival - Nuclear War And Environmental Catastrophe - And We're Hurtling Towards Them. Knowingly.

Public Opinion Can Be Influential, The Media Can Be Influential.

As A Research Tool, The Internet Is Invaluable.

All Over The Place, From The Popular Culture To The Propaganda System, There Is Constant Pressure To Make People Feel That They Are Helpless, That The Only Role They Can Have Is To Ratify Decisions And To Consume.

Pakistan Is Not A Unified Country.

Everyone Knows That When You Look At A Television Ad, You Do Not Expect To Get Information. You Expect To See Delusion And Imagery.

I'm About As Monolingual As You Come, But Nevertheless, I Have A Variety Of Different Languages At My Command, Different Styles, Different Ways Of Talking, Which Do Involve Different Parameter Settings.

It Could Be - And It Has Been Argued, In My View Rather Plausibly, Though Neuroscientists Don't Like It - That Neuroscience For The Last Couple Hundred Years Has Been On The Wrong Track.

You Could Imagine A Language Exactly Like English Except It Doesn't Have Connectives Like 'And' That Allow You To Make Longer Expressions. An Infant Learning Truncated English Would Have No Idea About This: They Would Just Pick It Up As They Would Standard English.

Language Is One Component Of The Human Cognitive Capacity Which Happens To Be Fairly Amenable To Enquiry. So We Know A Good Deal About That.

Death And Genitals Are Things That Frighten People, And When People Are Frightened, They Develop Means Of Concealment And Aggression. It Is Common Sense.

I Do Not Think Psychoanalysis Has A Scientific Basis. If We Can't Explain Why A Cockroach Decides To Turn Left, How Can We Explain Why A Human Being Decides To Do Something?

I Have Trouble Reading Modern Hebrew. In The 1950s, I Could Read Anything. I Don't Know How Much Experience You've Had With Contemporary Hebrew. It's Quite Difficult.

Human Nature Is Not Totally Fixed, But On Any Realistic Scale, Evolutionary Processes Are Much Too Slow To Affect It.