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We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 95
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
Computer Scientist
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Human Rights Activist
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Opinion Journalist
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East Oak Lane
Philadelphia
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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Farming out atrocities to paramilitaries is standard operating procedure.
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Nothing can justify crimes such as those of September 11, but we can think of the United States as an innocent victim only if we adopt the convenient path of ignoring the record of its actions and those of its allies, which are, after all, hardly a secret.
Noam Chomsky
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Growth is a funny sort of concept. For example, our GNP increases every time we build a prison. Well, okay, it's growth in a sense.
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One can neither agree nor disagree with a terminological proposal, as long as it is clear that it is just that: terminological.
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Right now, we happen to be in a general period of regression, not just in education. A lot of what's happening is sort of backlash to the 60s the 60s were a democratizing period.
Noam Chomsky
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All forms of involuntary servitude are prohibited, not only slavery but also conscription, forced association, and forced welfare distribution.
Noam Chomsky
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Whether the person should then be called an intellectual seems to reduce the issue to a question of terminology.
Noam Chomsky
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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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If something is right (or wrong) for us, it’s right (or wrong) for others. It follows that if it’s wrong for Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and a long list of others to bomb Washington and New York, then it’s wrong for Rumsfeld to bomb Afghanistan (on much flimsier pretexts), and he should be brought before war crimes trials.
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Similar problems are arising in Egypt too. The question is whether the military will release its grip which has been extremely strong for the past 60 years. So this is happening all over the region and particularly strikingly in Pakistan.
Noam Chomsky
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Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.
Noam Chomsky
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Freedom without opportunity is a devil's gift.
Noam Chomsky
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While the state can coerce, with some exceptions (like North Korea) it seems to me misleading to think of it as capable of enslavement.
Noam Chomsky
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The target of preventive war must have several characteristics. It must be virtually defenceless it must be important enough to be worth the trouble it must be possible to portray it as the ultimate evil and an imminent threat to our survival.
Noam Chomsky
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Take Germany and Japan, both defeated in the Second World War. Germany has acknowledged its monstrous crimes to a certain extent, has paid reparations and so on. Japan, in contrast, apologizes for nothing and has paid no reparations, with one exception: It pays reparations to the United States, but not to Asia.
Noam Chomsky
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Moral cowardice and intellectual corruption are the natural concomitants of unchallenged privilege.
Noam Chomsky
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I think we can be reasonably confident that if the American population had the slightest idea of what is being done in their name, they would be utterly appalled.
Noam Chomsky
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Somehow the fact of enormous privilege and freedom carries with it a sense of impotence, which is a strange, but striking, phenomenon. The fact is, we can do just about anything. There is no difficulty, wherever you are, in finding groups that are working hard on things that concern you.
Noam Chomsky
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CEOs pretty much pick the boards that give them salaries and bonuses. That's one of the reasons why the CEO-to-payment [ratio] has so sharply escalated in this country in contrast to Europe. (They're similar societies and it's bad enough there, but here we're in the stratosphere. ] There's no particular reason for it.
Noam Chomsky
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If anybody thinks they should listen to me because I'm a professor at MIT, that's nonsense. You should decide whether something makes sense by its content, not by the letters after the name of the person who says it.
Noam Chomsky