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If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 95
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
Computer Scientist
Historian
Human Rights Activist
Linguist
Media Critic
Opinion Journalist
Pedagogue
Philosopher
East Oak Lane
Philadelphia
Avram Noam Chomsky
A. Noam Chomsky
Chomsky
Live
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Comforting
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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There's very little dislike of Americans in the world, shown by repeated polls, and the dissatisfaction - that is, the hatred and the anger - they come from acceptance of American values, not a rejection of them, and recognition that they're rejected by the U.S. government and by U.S. elites, which does lead to hatred and anger.
Noam Chomsky
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Education is not for profit. If you're not in education for profit, it's not going to be a fair critique for education.
Noam Chomsky
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I don't really think there have been transitional periods to socialism. There have been efforts, but they have usually been destroyed by a combination of external force and internal corruption.
Noam Chomsky
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What can realistically be done depends on the historical moment. The same is true with regard to the agents.
Noam Chomsky
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The respected intellectuals are those who conform and serve power interests.
Noam Chomsky
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The fact is that if you have not developed language, you simply don't have access to most of human experience, and if you don't have access to experience, then you're not going to be able to think properly.
Noam Chomsky
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The book Manufacturing Consent, which I co-authored with Edward Herman, begins with a description of the structure and institutional setting of the commercial media, and then draws some rather simple-minded conclusions about what we would expect the media product to be, given these (not particularly controversial) conditions.
Noam Chomsky
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There are major efforts being made to dismantle Social Security, the public schools, the post office - anything that benefits the population has to be dismantled. Efforts against the U.S. Postal Service are particularly surreal.
Noam Chomsky
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After all, the internet originated around 1960 and wasn't privatized until 1995. That's thirty five years in the public domain during the hard, creative development period.
Noam Chomsky
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For the totalitarian mind, adherence to state propaganda does not suffice: one must display proper enthusiasm while marching in the parade.
Noam Chomsky
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Look, the United States doesn't have political parties. In other countries, take say Europe, you can be an active member of the political party. Here, the only thing in a political party is gearing to elections, not the other things you do. So it's basically, a way of making people passive, submissive objects.
Noam Chomsky
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The childcare tax credit makes some sense.
Noam Chomsky
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A woman was the property of her father or her husband and that remained true right into the twentieth century. It wasn't until 1975 that women had a guaranteed right to serve on federal juries.
Noam Chomsky
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There was great anxiety about Russian intervention in the recent German elections, perhaps contributing to the frightening surge of support for the right-wing nationalist, if not neo-fascist, Alternative for Germany.
Noam Chomsky
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Markets have built in inefficiencies, serious inefficiencies which are well known.
Noam Chomsky
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For example, when my father was able to buy a secondhand car in the late 1930s, and he took us to the countryside for a weekend, if we looked for a motel to stay in we had to see if it said restricted on it. Restricted meant no Jews.
Noam Chomsky
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Dissidents are not imprisoned as in the domains of the Kremlin, in the old days. They do not have their brains blown out by elite forces armed and trained by the reigning superpower, as happens in Washington's domains - with no particular concern at home - an important fact, one of many that help us learn about ourselves, if we choose.
Noam Chomsky
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The two countries [Pakistan and India] have already come close to nuclear confrontation twice and this could get worse. So dealing with the relationship with India is extremely important.
Noam Chomsky
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Occupy was not a movement, it was a tactic. You can't sit forever in a park near Wall Street. You can't do it for more than a few months. It was a tactic I had not predicted. If people asked me, I would have said don't do it. But it was a great success, an enormous success, with a big impact on people's thinking, on people's actions.
Noam Chomsky
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The media are a corporate monopoly. They have the same point of view. The two parties are two factions of the business party. Most of the population doesn't even bother voting because it looks meaningless. They're marginalized and properly distracted. At least that's the goal.
Noam Chomsky