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States are violent institutions. The government of any country, including ours, represents some sort of domestic power structure, and it's usually violent. States are violent to the extent that they're powerful, that's roughly accurate.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 95
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
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East Oak Lane
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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When I wrote about the Spanish Civil War many years later, I used documents that I picked up when I was a child, as a lot hadn't been published (a lot more resources are available now).
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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).
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It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.
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What right does the US have to do anything in Colombia? Does Colombia have the right to bomb North Carolina? There are more Colombians dying from tobacco than Americans dying from heroin.
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The West Bank is essentially imprisoned.
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I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.
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Should people be mere interested spectators of action, not participants, restricted to lending their weight periodically to one or another sector of the responsible men, as advocates of manufacture of consent have recommended? Or should their rights transcend these highly restricted bounds?
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The United States is unique among the rich countries, developed countries, in not having some kind of a national health-care system.
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The United States is off the international spectrum in religious extremism.
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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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I am not too happy with terms like “the left”, to be honest. And I don’t use it much….if by “the left” you mean people who are committed to peace and justice and freedom and so on, there can’t be elements of the left opposed to workers’ movement, at least under that definition.
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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.
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The U.S. has the most dysfunctional healthcare system in the industrial world, has about twice the per capita costs, and some of the worst outcomes. It's also the only privatized system.
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The Internet is an élite organization most of the population of the world has never even made a phone call.
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If you accept the institutional lunacy, then the policies are rational.
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I agree with Bill Clinton that US forces should not be sent to Haiti, but not for his reasons.
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Individuals in a university - students, faculty, staff - can choose to become politically engaged, and a free university should foster a climate in which those are natural choices.
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The senate was wealthy people and it wasn't elected, it was chosen through legislatures, which themselves were under private influence, powerful influence. They were remote from the population and that's where power was suppose to reside.
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Occupying armies have responsibilities, not rights. Their primary responsibility is to withdraw as quickly and expeditiously as possible, in a manner determined by the occupied population.
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Palestinians have no wealth or power.
Noam Chomsky