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The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
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East Oak Lane
Philadelphia
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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Real schools ought to provide people with techniques of self-defense, but that would mean teaching the truth about the world and about the society, and schools couldn't survive very long if they did that.
Noam Chomsky
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I don't think all thinking is a kind of rational structure. But I don't think it is correct to identify the rational-nonrational dichotomy with the linguistic-nonlinguistic dichotomy.
Noam Chomsky
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Radical Islamist extremists surely hope that an attack on Iraq will kill many people and destroy much of the country, providing recruits for terrorist actions.
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Bohemian Grove seems to be a kind of frat house affair. Bilderberg [philosophy] may be marginally more serious. The CFR is transparent. You can read their publications. In the 18th century it perhaps made some sense to conjure up the Illuminati and Masons. Not since.
Noam Chomsky
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[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
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There are massive efforts on the part of the internet's corporate owners to try to direct it to become a technique of marginalisation and control.
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Globalization is the result of powerful governments, especially that of the United States, pushing trade deals and other accords down the throats of the world’s people to make it easier for corporations and the wealthy to dominate the economies of nations around the world without having obligations to the peoples of those nations.
Noam Chomsky
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Surely no rational or realistic person will discount the possibility that [during wartime] the United States might suddenly resort to nuclear weapons. Those who retain the instinct for survival, not to speak of minimal concern for their fellow man, will seek ways to act before rather than after the event.
Noam Chomsky
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Academics are not necessarily nice people.
Noam Chomsky
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Women taking care of children . . . it makes sense to pay them for that work . . . they should be paid for it, but that requires tax payments. And the same is true about protection of the environment.
Noam Chomsky
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Yes, and Syrians. There is a horrible crisis there and the United States has admitted virtually none of the refugees.
Noam Chomsky
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Suppose that the US really is trying to get rid of drugs in Colombia. Does Colombia then have the right to fumigate tobacco farms in Kentucky? They are producing a lethal substance far more dangerous than cocaine. More Colombians die from tobacco-related illnesses than Americans die from cocaine. Of course, Colombia has no right to do that.
Noam Chomsky
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There's a strange myth of Anglo-Saxonism. When the University of Virginia was founded by Thomas Jefferson, for example, its law school offered the study of Anglo-Saxon Law. And that myth of Anglo-Saxonism carries right over into the early twentieth century.
Noam Chomsky
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The actual consequences of Plan Colombia are to devastate peasant communities, which have been driven to drug production. These peasants have no particular desire to grow coca, but their other means of livelihood have been wiped out.
Noam Chomsky
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Haitian rice farmers are quite efficient, but they can't compete with U.S. agribusiness that relies on a huge government subsidy, thanks to Ronald Reagan's free market enthusiasms.
Noam Chomsky
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With regard to nuclear weapons, it's kind of hard to say. [Donald Trump] is said lots of things. The national security experts are terrified. But they're more terrified by his personality than by his statements.
Noam Chomsky
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The invasion of Iraq was simply a war crime. Straight-out war crime.
Noam Chomsky
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If humans are organisms like every other organism - which they are - then we should expect that if there are some domains where real scientific progress is possible, then there are others where it is not.
Noam Chomsky
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Fed and electoral college could use some tinkering, but they are not the source of the problems.
Noam Chomsky
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It is one thing for the institution to offer space for serious engagement, in thought and action, and to encourage free and independent use of such opportunities it is something else for the university to become engaged as an institution, beyond a fairly narrow range where true consensus exists, and even that raises questions.
Noam Chomsky