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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
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Noam Chomsky
Age: 95
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
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East Oak Lane
Philadelphia
Avram Noam Chomsky
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky
We can try to gain some of the sensibility of some of the indigenous populations of the world or our predecessors 800 years ago. We can laugh at them as being naive and unsophisticated, but unless we can gain that sensibility that there has to be rights of nature as Bolivians and others put it, then we're going to be destroyed.
Noam Chomsky
The good news from the U.S. military survey of focus groups is that Iraqis do accept the Nuremberg principles. They understand that sectarian violence and the other postwar horrors are contained within the supreme international crime committed by the invaders.
Noam Chomsky
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
In southern culture, possession of a gun became kind of a sign of manhood, not just because of slaves but other white men. If you had a gun, you're not going to push me around. You know, I'm not one of those guys you can kick in the face.
Noam Chomsky
Evolutionary theory has nothing to say, in general, as to whether cheating is more advantageous than cooperating. There are many circumstances in which the contrary would be true, and empirical evidence, though it exists, has little bearing on real situations.
Noam Chomsky
The labor movement had been pretty much killed in the 1920s, almost destroyed. It revived in the 1930s and made a huge difference. By the late 1930s the business world was already trying to find ways to beat it back.
Noam Chomsky
If you're worried about the deficit, pay attention to the fact that it's almost all attributable to military spending and the totally dysfunctional health program.
Noam Chomsky
Of course all such conclusions about appropriate actions against the rich and powerful are based on a fundamental flaw: This is us, and that is them. This crucial principle, deeply embedded in Western culture, suffices to undermine even the most precise analogy and the most impeccable reasoning.
Noam Chomsky
The Soviet Union was pretty much what Lenin and Trotsky said it was.
Noam Chomsky
I think that we have basically nothing in the field of human behavior. Maybe that is just a condition of temporary ignorance. But it may be that we are simply not intellectually equipped to develop such a theory.
Noam Chomsky
During the 1990's, Colombia was the leading recipient of US military aid and training in the hemisphere. Approximately half of all US aid in the hemisphere went to Colombia. Colombia was also far and away the leading human rights violator in the hemisphere.
Noam Chomsky
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
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
Mexico is a pretty poor country, but they are maintaining a free, high quality public education system, not for everyone of course but pretty substantial.
Noam Chomsky
Iran is independent and independence is not tolerated.
Noam Chomsky
In general, the attitude towards Nazi Germany was not that hostile, especially if you look at the U.S. State Department reports. In 1937 the State Department was describing Adolf Hitler as a moderate who was holding off the forces of the right and the left.
Noam Chomsky
When I was a college student and I got interested in linguistics the concern among students was, this is a lot of fun, but after we have done a structural analysis of every language in the world what's left? It was assumed there were basically no puzzles.
Noam Chomsky
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.
Noam Chomsky
Ever since I've had any political awareness, I've felt either alone or part of a tiny minority.
Noam Chomsky
The threat is that the public will know what the government is up to. Any system of power is going to want to keep free from public surveillance, that's natural. Its shouldn't be but, its very natural.
Noam Chomsky
