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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
Illusion
Hero
Choose
Live
Heresy
World
Comforting
Anarchy
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Thrive

More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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Some international law specialists compare the invasion of Iraq to the 'crimes against the peace' for which Nazi leaders were indicted at Nuremberg.
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For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.
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A basic principle of modern state capitalism is that costs and risks are socialized to the extent possible, while profit is privatized.
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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.
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Say the Pentagon Papers, - that material went much deeper. It went into internal government planning back for twenty - five years. Those are things that the public should have known about. In a democracy they should have known what leaders thinking and planning about major enterprises like the Vietnam war. It was kept secret from them.
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The desire for hope and change is easily understandable. In many ways it's even more dramatic in Europe.
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The Obama administration is dedicated to increasing terrorism. In fact, he is doing it all over the world. Obama is running the biggest terrorist operation that exists, maybe in history. The drone assassination campaigns - which are just part of the special forces operations and so on - all of these operations are terror operations.
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Western intellectuals, and also Third World intellectuals, were attracted to the Bolshevik counter-revolution because Leninism is, after all, a doctrine which says that the radical intelligentsia have a right to take state power and to run their countries by force, and that is an idea which is rather appealing to intellectuals.
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Markets also have a very bad psychological effect. They drive people to a conception of themselves and society in which you're only after your own good, not the good of others and that's extremely harmful.
Noam Chomsky
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The attack on unions has been far more extreme here [in U.S], and it has been much more successful.
Noam Chomsky
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I do think that Magna Carta and international law are worth paying some attention to.
Noam Chomsky
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Power is concentrated. The general policy is exactly the way that Adam Smith described it: it's designed for the benefit of its principal architects, the powerful. It serves the vile maxim of the masters: all for ourselves and nothing for anyone else. Those are the basic rules of the world.
Noam Chomsky
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Whoever sets the agenda controls the outcome of the debate
Noam Chomsky
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In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival.
Noam Chomsky
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Iran is independent and independence is not tolerated.
Noam Chomsky
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The US is to an unusual extent a business-run society, where short-term concerns of profit and market share displace rational planning.
Noam Chomsky
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In the early days of the military Arpanet, my daughter was studying in Nicaragua. Because the U.S. was essentially at war with them, contact was difficult. I managed to use MIT's Arpanet connection, and she found one, so we could communicate thanks to the Pentagon!
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When leaders carry out policies for decades that have no consequences for the stated goal and are very costly, you have to ask whether they are telling you the truth or whether the policies are for a different goal, because they are not reducing drug use.
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If voting could actually change anything, it would be illegal.
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People who spend their working hours in a lab or research library or a classroom might be intent primarily on keeping or advancing their elite positions, thereby lending tacit support to power structures. Or they might not be.
Noam Chomsky