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Democratic societies can't force people. Therefore they have to control what they think.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
Computer Scientist
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Human Rights Activist
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Media Critic
Opinion Journalist
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Philosopher
East Oak Lane
Philadelphia
Avram Noam Chomsky
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People
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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In the late 1990s, some of the worst terrorist atrocities in the world were what the Turkish government itself called state terror, namely massive atrocities, 80 percent of the arms coming from the United States, millions of refugees, tens of thousands of people killed, hideous repression, that's international terror, and we can go on and on.
Noam Chomsky
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The Bush Administration do have moral values. Their moral values are very explicit: shine the boots of the rich and the powerful, kick everybody else in the face, and let your grandchildren pay for it. That simple principle predicts almost everything that's happening.
Noam Chomsky
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If you want to end terrorism stop participating in it.
Noam Chomsky
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In general, the attitude towards Nazi Germany was not that hostile, especially if you look at the U.S. State Department reports. In 1937 the State Department was describing Adolf Hitler as a moderate who was holding off the forces of the right and the left.
Noam Chomsky
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[With] military threats, you can see them actually, you can imagine it. People don't think about it enough. But if you think about it for a minute, you can see that a nuclear attack could be the end of everything.
Noam Chomsky
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Work can be undertaken to create an authentic independent political party, a real party, based on popular participation from the ground up, not a top-down candidate producing organization like the two official parties, working from school boards to state legislatures and beyond. Not easy in the regressive U.S. political system, but not impossible.
Noam Chomsky
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Legalizing marijuana would make a lot of sense, I don't think there's a single case of marijuana overdose on record and tens of millions of users. It's much less dangerous than alcohol, for example.
Noam Chomsky
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There are massive efforts on the part of the internet's corporate owners to try to direct it to become a technique of marginalisation and control.
Noam Chomsky
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I'm into eating as little as possible, paying as little attention as possible. I never cook. Never use the stove or anything.
Noam Chomsky
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It is reported that about 30% of the world's population is unemployed. That's worse than the Great Depression, but it's now an international phenomenon.
Noam Chomsky
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China has been there for 3,000 years, has contempt for the barbarians, is overcoming a century of domination, and simply moves on its own. It does not get intimidated when Uncle Sam shakes his fist. That's scary.
Noam Chomsky
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There's actually an article in the Washington Post, I don't know whether it's tongue in cheek or not, which said the criterion for being on the list of banned states is that [Donald] Trump doesn't have business interests there.
Noam Chomsky
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Our current prison state has the dual effect of getting rid of a superfluous population of basically unskilled workers (with a close race-class correlation), and also demonizing them... The drug war is basically for this - It has nothing to do with drugs, but it has plenty to do with criminalizing an unwanted population and scaring everybody else.
Noam Chomsky
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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.
Noam Chomsky
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The United States is a violent military state. It's been involved in military action all over the place.
Noam Chomsky
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Intellectuals of the categories happen to enjoy unusual privilege, unique in history, I suppose. It's easy enough to find ugly illustrations of repression, malice, dishonesty, marginalization and exclusion in the academic world.
Noam Chomsky
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In the years of the Reagan-Bush administration alone, about 1.5 million people were killed by South Africa just in the surrounding countries. Forget what was happening in South Africa and Namibia.
Noam Chomsky
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The development of space technology, including space warfare today, is similar in its technological-industrial significance to the development of navies a hundred years ago.
Noam Chomsky
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What the [James] Monroe Doctrine stated, in effect, is that the US should dominate the hemisphere.
Noam Chomsky
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I mean the reason the sit-down strikes struck such fear in the hearts of management was that they knew that a sit-down strike was just one step short of taking over the factory.
Noam Chomsky