Quote

The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another.

Noam Chomsky

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Noam Chomsky
Age: 96
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
Lying
Rather
Hate
Fear
Thrive
Another
Shapes
Ends
Lies
Power
Policy
People
Public

More quotes by Noam Chomsky

Image
Trump's principal policies make clear what's going to happen. This gives an opportunity. Right now it's going to take hard work, but it's possible that there could be a real revival of the labor movement.
Noam Chomsky
Image
There is no western concern for issues of aggression, atrocities, human rights abuses and so on if there's a profit to be made from them
Noam Chomsky
Image
Anyone in a position to overcome barriers to free thought and communication should do so.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The very properties of the human mind that provide an enormous scope for human genius in some domains will serve as barriers to progress in other domains, just as the properties that enable each child to acquire a complex and highly articulated human language block the acquisition of other imaginable linguistic systems.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The new crimes that the US and Israel were committing in Gaza as 2009 opened do not fit easily into any standard category—except for the category of familiarity.
Noam Chomsky
Image
States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.
Noam Chomsky
Image
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
Image
I think such an inquiry will reveal a rather different picture: namely, it will reveal a very strong tendency for the intellectuals who are respected and privileged to be those who subordinate themselves to power.
Noam Chomsky
Image
I mean, the liberal democrats aren't going to tell the average American, Yeah, you're being shafted because of the policies that we've established over the years that we're maintaining now. That's not going to be an answer. And they're not getting answers from the left.
Noam Chomsky
Image
[According to the rigid dogma] we have to believe the United States would have so-called liberated Iraq even if its main products were lettuce and pickles and the main energy resource of the world were in central Africa.
Noam Chomsky
Image
You know, we have little bits of understanding, glimpses, a little bit of light here and there, but there's a tremendous amount of darkness, which is a challenge. I think life would be pretty boring if we understood everything. It's better if we don't understand anything and know that we don't, that's the important part.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The [Ronald] Reagan administration told the business world that they were not going to enforce the labor laws.
Noam Chomsky
Image
There are huge areas where the human mind is apparently incapable of forming sciences, or at least has not done so. There are other areas - so far, in fact, one area only [physics] - in which we have demonstrated the capacity for true scientific progress.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The rise of what's called Islamic fundamentalism is to a significant extent a result of the collapse of secular nationalist alternatives which were either discredited internally or destroyed, leaving few other options. Something like that may be true of American society.
Noam Chomsky
Image
In the late 19th century there was a major union organization, Knights of Labor, and also a radical populist movement based on farmers. It's hard to believe, but it was based in Texas, and it was quite radical. They wanted their own banks, their own cooperatives, their own control over sales and commerce.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Farming out atrocities to paramilitaries is standard operating procedure.
Noam Chomsky
Image
You can go into the Library of Congress and find information on just about anything, but that doesn't do you much good unless you know what you are looking for.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Markets have built in inefficiencies, serious inefficiencies which are well known.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values.
Noam Chomsky
Image
In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category.
Noam Chomsky