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Death and genitals are things that frighten people, and when people are frightened, they develop means of concealment and aggression. It is common sense.

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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East Oak Lane
Philadelphia
Avram Noam Chomsky
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Mean
Frighten
Things
Aggression
People
Frightened
Develop
Common
Means
Sense
Genitals
Death
Concealment

More quotes by 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.
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You ought to teach kids that elections take place but that's not politics. If you want to know how legislation is made it doesn't come from elections.
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They [unions] used straight Marxist rhetoric [in 1930s] - just the values were changed.
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The basic principle, rarely violated, is that what conflicts with the requirements of power and privilege does not exist.
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Every single one cabinet appointment: education, environment, labor - every single one is selected to undermine any aspect of government that's of any help to people, and that doesn't benefit the super-rich. And it's absolutely systematic. The interesting question will be how long Donald Trump's constituency can fall for the con game.
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Greece, alone, is in a very vulnerable position. If the Greeks had had support from progressive left and popular forces elsewhere in Europe they might have been able to resist the demands of the Troika, but they had almost no support. Not even from Portugal, Spain, or other left forces. They were left alone.
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The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor led to many very good things. If you follow the trail, it led to kicking Europeans out of Asia - that saved tens of millions of lives in India alone.
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I don't think that the United States cares. They just assume that North Korea will soon have nuclear weapons.
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Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
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I still think, despite everything, that the US is very unlikely to attack Iran. It could be a huge catastrophe nobody knows what the consequences would be. I imagine that only an administration that's really desperate would resort to that.
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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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Those who had demanded no more than an end to the bombing of North Vietnam and a commitment to negotiations saw their demands being realized, and lapsed into silence.
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There is always room for Gramsci's optimism of the will.
Noam Chomsky
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There is a kind of nonlinguistic thought going on which we are trying to represent in language, and we know that sometimes we fail.
Noam Chomsky
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Anyone in a position to overcome barriers to free thought and communication should do so.
Noam Chomsky
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Real popular culture is folk art - coalminers' songs and so forth.
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Half the population hold that the government is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves, as polls regularly show.
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What the [James] Monroe Doctrine stated, in effect, is that the US should dominate the hemisphere.
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You can't get votes that way. So [the Republicans] have been compelled to mobilize a base of voters and gone to elements of the country that have always been there but were kind of marginal to the political system, for example, religious extremists.
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I have never heard of anyone who was a model person in all aspects of his or her life, intellectual life or other aspects nor do I see why anyone should care. We are not engaged in idol worship, after all.
Noam Chomsky