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For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 95
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
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Avram Noam Chomsky
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My linguistics is pretty theoretical.
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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.
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Elements of the Christian fundamentalist right are one of the strongest components of support for Israel - support in an odd sense, because they presumably want to see it destroyed in a cosmic battle at Armageddon, after which all the proper souls will ascend to heaven - or so I understand, again, not from close reading.
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I know of people whose actions and words I admire and respect. Some are called intellectuals, some are not.
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Clinton, Kennedy, they all carried out mass murder, but they didn't think that that was what they were doing - nor does Bush. You know, they were defending justice and democracy from greater evils.
Noam Chomsky
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How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me.
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You don't get to be a respected intellectual by uttering truisms in monosyllables.
Noam Chomsky
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Advertising is tax deductible, so we all pay for the privilege of being manipulated and controlled.
Noam Chomsky
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There is always room for Gramsci's optimism of the will.
Noam Chomsky
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If you are not offending people who ought to be offended, you're doing something wrong.
Noam Chomsky
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I have not suggested that the emergence of language is instantaneous. Rather, that the rewiring of the brain enabling an infinite array of structured expressions was in effect instantaneous. I have never heard of an alternative to this suggestion.
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Roughly speaking, I think it's accurate to say that a corporate elite of managers and owners governs the economy and the political system as well, at least in very large measure.
Noam Chomsky
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I don't see how one can believe in organized religion. What does it mean to believe in an organization? One can join it, support it, oppose it, accept its doctrines or reject them. There are many kinds of organized religion. People associate themselves with some of them, or not, for all sorts of reasons, maybe belief in some of their doctrines
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It also seems beyond controversy that moral responsibilities are greater to the extent that people have the resources, the training, the facilities and opportunities to speak and act effectively.
Noam Chomsky
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Plainly, children learn their language. I don't speak Swahili. And it cannot be that my language is 'an innate property of our brain.' Otherwise I would have been genetically programmed to speak (some variety of) English.
Noam Chomsky
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On October 15, 1965, an estimated 70,000 people took part in large-scale anti-war demonstrations.
Noam Chomsky
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We live in this world, not another one that we'd prefer, and sometimes it's necessary to follow painful paths if we hope to provide at least a little help for suffering people.
Noam Chomsky
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It's very hard to look in the mirror. We all know this. It's much easier to have illusions about yourself. And in particular, when you think, well, I'm going to believe what I like, but I'll say what the powerful want, you do that over time, and you believe what you say.
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Personally, I am uneasy about the notion of a politically engaged university, for reasons I wrote about over 30 years ago, at the height of protest and resistance (reprinted in For Reasons of State).
Noam Chomsky
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Free markets are based on the free circulation of labor. If you don't have free circulation of labor, you don't have free markets.
Noam Chomsky