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Noam Chomsky Quotes

American linguist and philosopher, Birth: 7-12-1928 Noam Chomsky Quotes
1.
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.
Noam Chomsky

Learners who take on substantial obligations to finance their education are unlikely to consider transforming society. When one binds individuals in a system of indebtedness, they cannot manage the expense of reflection.
2.
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
Noam Chomsky

3.
The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know.
Noam Chomsky

The mass populace is ignorant of the facts, and unaware of its own lack of awareness.
4.
As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.
Noam Chomsky

5.
Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours.
Noam Chomsky

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6.
It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions - you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism.
Noam Chomsky

7.
That's the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.
Noam Chomsky

The usual practice of privatization: deprive of funds, ensure inefficiency, generate bitterness, and transfer to private investors.
8.
Neoliberal democracy. 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 sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future.
Noam Chomsky

Quote Topics by Noam Chomsky: People Thinking War Country Mean Government Years World Political Media Democracy Real Rights Military Powerful United States Running Party America Believe Law Long Principles Trying Ideas Support Want Technology Class Europe
9.
Jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you're trying to organize a mass base of support for policies that are really intended to crush them.
Noam Chomsky

Nationalistic fervor, discrimination, apprehension, orthodox zealotry: these are the means of gaining adherents if you're attempting to construct a broad foundation of assistance for policies that are truly meant to oppress them.
10.
There's a good reason why nobody studies history, it just teaches you too much.
Noam Chomsky

'Studying history can be an overwhelming experience, as it provides too much knowledge.'
11.
The world is a very puzzling place. If you're not willing to be puzzled, you just become a replica of someone else's mind.
Noam Chomsky

The world is a mysterious domain. If you don't take the time to explore its complexity, you just become an echo of another person's thought processes.
12.
Democratic societies can't force people. Therefore they have to control what they think.
Noam Chomsky

Democratic societies cannot compel individuals; thus, they must shape their opinions.
13.
Nobody should have any illusions. The United States has essentially a one-party system and the ruling party is the business party.
Noam Chomsky

No one should harbor any false hopes. In effect, the United States is a single-party nation and the incumbent power is that of business.
14.
If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that's something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can't live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.
Noam Chomsky

15.
When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: "Why do I care if my high school's team wins the football game? I don't know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me... why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense." But the point is, it does make sense: It's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports.
Noam Chomsky

16.
The point of public relations slogans like "Support Our Troops" is that they don't mean anything ... that's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody is going to be against and I suppose everybody will be for, because nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. But its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something, do you support our policy? And that's the one you're not allowed to talk about.
Noam Chomsky

17.
If you want to control a population... give them a God to worship.
Noam Chomsky

If you desire to manipulate a populous... provide them with an idol to venerate.
18.
The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on -- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions.
Noam Chomsky

19.
A language is not just words. It's a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It's all embodied in a language.
Noam Chomsky

A language is not merely a collection of words. It is an embodiment of culture, tradition and the collective history that makes up a community.
20.
The police can go to downtown Harlem and pick up a kid with a joint in the streets. But they can't go into the elegant apartments and get a stockbroker who's sniffing cocaine.
Noam Chomsky

21.
If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
Noam Chomsky

22.
Hypocrites are those who apply to others the standards that they refuse to accept for themselves.
Noam Chomsky

23.
Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.
Noam Chomsky

24.
The indoctrination is so deep that educated people think they’re being objective.
Noam Chomsky

25.
Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It's something you have to find out for yourself.
Noam Chomsky

26.
It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.
Noam Chomsky

27.
If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world.
Noam Chomsky

28.
The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - 'indoctrination,' we might say - exercised through the mass media.
Noam Chomsky

29.
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.
Noam Chomsky

30.
Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.
Noam Chomsky

31.
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.
Noam Chomsky

32.
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.
Noam Chomsky

33.
I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions... Don't take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can't. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself.
Noam Chomsky

34.
Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.
Noam Chomsky

35.
What's the point of being better than someone else?
Noam Chomsky

36.
The media want to maintain their intimate relation to state power. They want to get leaks, they want to get invited to the press conferences. They want to rub shoulders with the Secretary of State, all that kind of business. To do that, you've got to play the game, and playing the game means telling their lies, serving as their disinformation apparatus.
Noam Chomsky

37.
The leading student of business propaganda, Australian social scientist Alex Carey, argues persuasively that “the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
Noam Chomsky

38.
You are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions.
Noam Chomsky

39.
I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.
Noam Chomsky

40.
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state...
Noam Chomsky

41.
Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are, in principle, under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist, that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level. [...] Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I am opposed to economic fascism. I think that until the major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.
Noam Chomsky

42.
The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.
Noam Chomsky

43.
Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.
Noam Chomsky

44.
How it is we have so much information, but know so little?
Noam Chomsky

45.
A drone strike is a terror weapon, we don't talk about it that way. It is; just imagine you are walking down the street and you don't know whether in 5 minutes there is going to be an explosion across the street from some place up in the sky that you can't see. Somebody will be killed, and whoever is around will be killed, maybe you'll be injured if you're there. That is a terror weapon. It terrorizes villages, regions, huge areas. It's the most massive terror campaign going on by a long shot.
Noam Chomsky

46.
It's as if we're higher apes who had a language faculty inserted.
Noam Chomsky

47.
He who controls the media controls the minds of the public.
Noam Chomsky

48.
In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population.
Noam Chomsky

49.
Education is a system of imposed ignorance.
Noam Chomsky

50.
Far from creating independent thinkers, schools have always, throughout history, played an institutional role in a system of control and coercion. And once you are well educated you have already been socialized in ways that support the power structure, which, in turn, rewards you immensely.
Noam Chomsky