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If voting could actually change anything, it would be illegal.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 95
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
Computer Scientist
Historian
Human Rights Activist
Linguist
Media Critic
Opinion Journalist
Pedagogue
Philosopher
East Oak Lane
Philadelphia
Avram Noam Chomsky
A. Noam Chomsky
Chomsky
Would
Voting
Illegal
Actually
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Anything

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The question in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided . . . democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured they may well be essential to survival.
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We had one or another form of state capitalism during an extremely brief period of human history, which tells us essentially nothing about human nature. If you look at human societies and human interactions, you can find anything. You find selfishness, you find altruism, you find sympathy.
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In the primary debates for the 2016 election, every single Republican candidate was a climate change denier, with one exception, John Kasich - the rational moderate - who said it may be happening but we shouldn't do anything about it. For a long time, the media have downplayed the issue.
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For one thing, studying language is by itself a part of a study of human intelligence that is, perhaps, the central aspect of human nature. And second, I think, it is a good model for studying other human properties, which ought to be studied by psychologists in the same way.
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The crimes against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and elsewhere, particularly Lebanon, are so shocking that the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a call for extreme actions. But that does not help the victims. And, in fact, it's likely to harm them.
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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.
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There’s no more morality in world affairs, fundamentally, than there was at the time of Genghis Khan.
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When you read about the end of the Soviet Union, it's always about the death of socialism. They never say the death of democracy. But it makes about the same sense.
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The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.
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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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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.
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The respected intellectuals are those who conform and serve power interests.
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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.
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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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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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If you are not offending people who ought to be offended, you're doing something wrong.
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The social system is taking on a form in which finding out what you want to do is less and less of an option because your life is too structured, organised, controlled and disciplined.
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Why not stakeholder action? There's no economic principal that says that management should be responsive to shareholders, in fact you can read in texts of business economics that they could just as well have a system in which the management is responsible to stakeholders.
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Those who actually do have a valid claim to such special competence have a particular obligation to make very clear to the general public the limits of what is understood at any serious level these limits are typically very narrow in matters of significance in human affairs.
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The two countries [Pakistan and India] have already come close to nuclear confrontation twice and this could get worse. So dealing with the relationship with India is extremely important.
Noam Chomsky