Noam Chomsky Quotes And Sayings

It Is Easy To Dismiss The World As 'Irrelevant,' Or Consumed By 'Paranoid Anti-americanism,' But Perhaps Not Wise.

Even In The 1950s, President Eisenhower Was Concerned About What He Called A Campaign Of Hatred Of The U.s. In The Arab World, Because Of The Perception On The Arab Street That It Supported Harsh And Oppressive Regimes To Take Their Oil.

Some Of The Most Moving Experiences I've Had Are Just In Black Churches In The South, During The Civil Rights Movement, Where People Were Getting Beaten, Killed, Really Struggling For The Most Elementary Rights.

I Did Used To Have Nightmares About The Idea That When I Die, There Is A Spark Of Consciousness Which Basically Creates The World. 'Is The World Going To Disappear If This Spark Of Consciousness Disappears? And How Do I Know It Won't? How Do I Know There's Anything There Except What I'm Conscious Of?'

The Oslo Accords In 1993 Determined That The Gaza Strip And The West Bank Are A Single Territorial Entity Which Cannot Be Divided. Immediately, The United States And Israel Set About Separating The Two And Making Sure That They Would Not Be United.

China Is A Great Manufacturing Center, But It's Actually Mostly An Assembly Plant. So It Assembles Parts And Components, High Technology That Comes From The Surrounding Industrial - More Advanced Industrial Centers - Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, The United States, Europe - And It Basically Assembles Them.

The Greatest Progress Is In The Sciences That Study The Simplest Systems. So Take, Say, Physics - Greatest Progress There. But One Of The Reasons Is That The Physicists Have An Advantage That No Other Branch Of Sciences Has. If Something Gets Too Complicated, They Hand It To Someone Else.

The More You Can Increase Fear Of Drugs And Crime, Welfare Mothers, Immigrants And Aliens, The More You Control All The People.

Some May Remember, If You Have Good Memories, That There Used To Be A Concept In Anglo-american Law Called A Presumption Of Innocence, Innocent Until Proven Guilty In A Court Of Law. Now That's So Deep In History That There's No Point Even Bringing It Up, But It Did Once Exist.

Britain Kept Its Position As The Dominant World Power Well Into The 20th Century Despite Steady Decline. By The End Of World War Ii, Dominance Had Shifted Decisively Into The Hands Of The Upstart Across The Sea, The United States, By Far The Most Powerful And Wealthy Society In World History.

Undoubtedly, The U.s. Harbors Leading International Terrorists, People Described By The F.b.i. And The Justice Department As Leading Terrorists, Like Orlando Bosch, Now Posada Carriles, Not To Speak Of Those Who Actually Implement State Terrorism.

Chemistry, Until My Childhood, Not That Long Ago, Was Regarded As A Calculating Device. Because You Couldn't Reduce To Physics. So It's Just Some Way Of Calculating The Result Of Experiments. The Bohr Atom Was Treated That Way.

There's Plenty To Criticize About The Mass Media, But They Are The Source Of Regular Information About A Wide Range Of Topics. You Can't Duplicate That On Blogs.

International Affairs Is Very Much Run Like The Mafia. The Godfather Does Not Accept Disobedience, Even From A Small Storekeeper Who Doesn't Pay His Protection Money. You Have To Have Obedience; Otherwise, The Idea Can Spread That You Don't Have To Listen To The Orders, And It Can Spread To Important Places.

What Happened In The Missile Crisis In October 1962 Has Been Prettified To Make It Look As If Acts Of Courage And Thoughtfulness Abounded. The Truth Is That The Whole Episode Was Almost Insane.

It's A Near Miracle That Nuclear War Has So Far Been Avoided.

The 1950s And 1960s Had Been A Period Of Enormous Growth, The Highest In American History, Maybe In Economic History.

When George W. Bush Came Into Office, North Korea Had Maybe One Nuclear Weapon And Verifiably Wasn't Producing Any More.

The United States Was Seriously Defeated In Iraq By Iraqi Nationalism - Mostly By Nonviolent Resistance. The United States Could Kill The Insurgents, But They Couldn't Deal With Half A Million People Demonstrating In The Streets.

Before The 1970s, Banks Were Banks. They Did What Banks Were Supposed To Do In A State Capitalist Economy: They Took Unused Funds From Your Bank Account, For Example, And Transferred Them To Some Potentially Useful Purpose Like Helping A Family Buy A Home Or Send A Kid To College.

If We Choose, We Can Live In A World Of Comforting Illusion.

When A Politician Uses The Word 'Folks,' We Should Brace Ourselves For The Deceit, Or Worse, That Is Coming.

A Large Majority Of Americans Believe That The U.n., Not The U.s., Should Take The Lead In Working With Iraqis To Transfer Authentic Sovereignty As Well As In Economic Reconstruction And Maintaining Civic Order.

There Is No Body Of Theory Or Significant Body Of Relevant Information, Beyond The Comprehension Of The Layman, Which Makes Policy Immune From Criticism.

Debt Is A Trap, Especially Student Debt, Which Is Enormous, Far Larger Than Credit Card Debt. It's A Trap For The Rest Of Your Life Because The Laws Are Designed So That You Can't Get Out Of It. If A Business, Say, Gets In Too Much Debt, It Can Declare Bankruptcy, But Individuals Can Almost Never Be Relieved Of Student Debt Through Bankruptcy.

When I Arrived In Laos And Found Young Americans Living There, Out Of Free Choice, I Was Surprised. After Only A Week, I Began To Have A Sense Of The Appeal Of The Country And Its People - Along With Despair About Its Future.

Rational Discussion Is Useful Only When There Is A Significant Base Of Shared Assumptions.

Free Speech Has Been Used By The Supreme Court To Give Immense Power To The Wealthiest Members Of Our Society.

Thanh Hoa Itself Is A Rich Agricultural Province. Rice Fields, A Pattern Of Many Shades Of Green, Stretch Far Into The Distance Along The Road, Which Also Winds Through Foothills And The Fringes Of Heavy Jungle Where Tigers Are Said To Roam. The Vegetation, Wild Or Cultivated, Is Lush.

In The United States, One Of The Main Topics Of Academic Political Science Is The Study Of Attitudes And Policy And Their Correlation. The Study Of Attitudes Is Reasonably Easy In The United States: Heavily-polled Society, Pretty Serious And Accurate Polls, And Policy You Can See, And You Can Compare Them.

I Stated That Hiroshima And Nagasaki Are 'Among The Most Unspeakable Crimes In History.' I Took No Position On Just Where They Stand On The Scale Of Horrors Relative To Auschwitz, The Bombing Of Chungking, Lidice, And So On.

Everybody's Worried About Stopping Terrorism. Well, There's A Really Easy Way: Stop Participating In It.

We Can, For Example, Be Fairly Confident That Either There Will Be A World Without War Or There Won't Be A World - At Least, A World Inhabited By Creatures Other Than Bacteria And Beetles, With Some Scattering Of Others.

Anywhere In Latin America There Is A Potential Threat Of The Pathology Of Caudillismo And It Has To Be Guarded Against.

With The Development Of Industrial Capitalism, A New And Unanticipated System Of Injustice, It Is Libertarian Socialism That Has Preserved And Extended The Radical Humanist Message Of The Enlightenment And The Classical Liberal Ideals That Were Perverted Into An Ideology To Sustain The Emerging Social Order.

I Like The Cold Weather. It Means You Get Work Done.

Unlike Iran, Israel Refuses To Allow Inspections At All, Refuses To Join The Non-proliferation Treaty, Has Hundreds Of Nuclear Weapons, Has Advanced Delivery Systems.

As Far As U.s. Intelligence Knows, Iran Is Developing Nuclear Capacities, But They Don't Know If They Are Trying To Develop Nuclear Weapons Or Not. Chances Are They're Developing What's Called 'Nuclear Capability,' Which Many States Have. That Is The Ability To Have Nuclear Weapons If They Decide To Do It. That's Not A Crime.

I Don't Join The New Atheists. So, For Example, I Wouldn't Have The Arrogance To Lecture Some Mother Who Hopes To See Her Dying Child In Heaven - That's None Of My Business, Ultimately. I Won't Lecture Her On The Philosophy Of Science.

In The Early 1940s, As A Young Teenager, I Was Utterly Appalled By The Racist And Jingoist Hysteria Of The Anti-japanese Propaganda. The Germans Were Evil, But Treated With Some Respect: They Were, After All, Blond Aryan Types, Just Like Our Imaginary Self-image. Japanese Were Mere Vermin, To Be Crushed Like Ants.

The Process Of Shaping Opinion, Attitudes, And Perceptions Was Termed The 'Engineering Of Consent' By One Of The Founders Of The Modern Public Relations Industry, Edward Bernays.

The Washington Leadership Has Put Aside Non-proliferation Programmes And Devoted Its Energies And Resources To Driving The Country To War By Extraordinary Deceit, Then Trying To Manage The Catastrophe It Created In Iraq.

Nato Was Constructed On The - With The Reason, Whether One Believes It Or Not, That It Was Going To Defend Western Europe From Russian Assault. Once The Berlin Wall Fell And The Soviet Union Was Beginning To Collapse, That Reason Was Gone. So, First Question: Why Does Nato Exist?

As A Zionist Youth Leader In The 1940s, I Was Among Those Who Called For A Binational State In Mandatory Palestine. When A Jewish State Was Declared, I Felt That It Should Have The Rights Of Other States - No More, No Less.

Everyone Who Is Critical Of Israeli Policy Is Deluged By Crazed Messages Intended To Flood Their Email System Or, More Insidiously, Passwords Are Accessed And Messages Sent Out Under Their Name! I'm Sure It's Illegal. It's Also An Effort To Undermine Free Speech.

In November 2004, U.s. Occupation Forces Launched Their Second Major Attack On The City Of Falluja. The Press Reported Major War Crimes Instantly, With Approval.

A Very Large Majority Of The U.s. Population Is In Favor Of Establishing Diplomatic Relations With Cuba And Has Been For A Long Time With Some Fluctuations. And Even Part Of The Business World Is In Favor Of It, Too. But The Government Won't Allow It.

Stability Is When The U.k. And U.s. Invade A Country And Impose The Regime Of Their Choice.

The People Who Were Honored In The Bible Were The False Prophets. It Was The Ones We Call The Prophets Who Were Jailed And Driven Into The Desert.

Turkey Must Find Its Place If, Of Course, It Can Heal Its Internal Sores, And None Is More Malignant Than The Perennial Kurdish Issue.