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

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Technology is basically neutral. It's kind of like a hammer. The hammer doesn't care whether you use it to build a house, or whether a torturer uses it to crush somebody's skull.
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In the humanities and social sciences, and in fields like journalism and economics and so on, people have to be trained to be managers, and controllers, and to accept things, and not to question too much.
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In some ways, [the student anti-sweatshop movement] is like the anti-apartheid movement, except that in this case its striking at the core of the relations of exploitation. Much of this was initiated by Charlie Kernaghan of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights.
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The two tendencies are antithetical in significant respects. These are distinctions that should be kept in mind, however one feels that the problems and dilemmas that constantly arise should be resolved.
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In the United States everyone is an illegal immigrant - everyone except the people in Indian Reservations. This is an immigrant society.
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I mean, what's the elections? You know, two guys, same background, wealth, political influence, went to the same elite university, joined the same secret society where you're trained to be a ruler - they both can run because they're financed by the same corporate institutions.
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Take something you really don't think about: Plastics in the ocean. I mean plastics in the ocean have an enormous ecological effect.
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A large part of the left is pro-Assad. In those circles, you can't criticize Assad, but you know he's a monstrous war criminal. And anyone who criticizes Assad is joining the US imperialists. That's just ludicrous.
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The focus on creativity and independence exists in pockets of resistance in the educational system, which, to thrive, should be integrated with the needs and concerns of the great majority of the population. One finds them everywhere.
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It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions - you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism.
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I have written occasionally on links between my scientific work and political thinking, but not much, because the links seem to me abstract and speculative.
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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.
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It's not radical Islam that worries the US -- it's independence
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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 Zionist movement based in Palestine pretty much took over the camps and instituted the policy that every man and woman between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five should be directed to Palestine - not allowed to go to the West.
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Power is concentrated. The general policy is exactly the way that Adam Smith described it: it's designed for the benefit of its principal architects, the powerful. It serves the vile maxim of the masters: all for ourselves and nothing for anyone else. Those are the basic rules of the world.
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Our minds are specifically adapted to developing certain theories, and we have a science if the theories that are available to our minds happen to be close to true. Well, there is no particular reason to suppose that the intersection of true theories and theories that are accessible to the mind is very large. It may not be very large.
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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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US wars are going to be against much weaker enemies. And they have to be won quickly and decisively before a popular reaction develops.
Noam Chomsky
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Those are possibilities for technology, which don't tend to be used, because of the way power is concentrated. There are all kinds of possibilities, including for coercion. In China, technology is used to control and coerce. Here too, to an extent, but not to that extent.
Noam Chomsky