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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.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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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.
Noam Chomsky
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[CIA manipulating] has its roots in internal Pakistani affairs. It's a horrible development and phenomenon which goes back to radical Islamisation under Zia and taking away the long standing rights of people in the tribal areas [who were left largely alone].
Noam Chomsky
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Silicon Valley wouldn't exist without massive government spending and in fact initiative.
Noam Chomsky
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Most of intellectuals are false prophets, flatterers of the court. The real prophets are the exception and treated badly. How badly they're treated depends on the society. Like in Eastern Europe, they were treated very badly. In Latin America, they were slaughtered.
Noam Chomsky
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I don't see much use in general slogans. Sometimes it is worth resisting evil with lesser evil, very commonly in fact.
Noam Chomsky
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Major efforts have to be undertaken to bring the general public to understand the real reasons for their plight, and the possibilities for radical social and political change to construct meaningful popular control of all institutions - in communities, in the workplace, in the larger society, and on to the international order.
Noam Chomsky
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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?
Noam Chomsky
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Suppose that, say, China established military bases in Colombia to carry out chemical warfare in Kentucky and North Carolina to destroy this lethal crop [tobacco] that is killing huge numbers of Chinese.
Noam Chomsky
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If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That's not going to happen if you care only about yourself.
Noam Chomsky
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The new crimes that the US and Israel were committing in Gaza as 2009 opened do not fit easily into any standard category—except for the category of familiarity.
Noam Chomsky
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In the Munich agreement in late 1938 [Franklin] Roosevelt sent his chief adviser Sumner Welles, who came back with a very supportive statement saying that Hitler was someone we could really do business with and so on.
Noam Chomsky
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It's not a matter of public relations and rhetorical style but of actions. It's the actions and policies under George W.Bush administration that have left the US government remarkably isolated, feared and often hated to an extent with no historical precedent.
Noam Chomsky
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When I look at public opinion, I'm not far out of the mainstream. I'm in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I've ever said.
Noam Chomsky
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I am opposed to the accumulation of executive power anywhere.
Noam Chomsky
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I mean, the liberal democrats aren't going to tell the average American, Yeah, you're being shafted because of the policies that we've established over the years that we're maintaining now. That's not going to be an answer. And they're not getting answers from the left.
Noam Chomsky
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I just don't care about popular culture. It looks to me pointless and superficial. If I had free time I'd rather read a 19th century novel.
Noam Chomsky
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To live a life of honesty and integrity is a responsibility of every decent person.
Noam Chomsky
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The US and Europe are committing suicide in different ways. In Europe it's austerity in the midst of recession and that's guaranteed to be a disaster. There's some resistance to that now. In the US, it's essentially off-shoring production and financialization and getting rid of superfluous population through incarceration.
Noam Chomsky
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There are cases - for example, the American Revolution. George Washington's army lost just about every battle with the British, who had a much better army. The war was basically won by guerrilla forces that managed to undermine the British occupation.
Noam Chomsky
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I think the activism of the 1960s had a very definite civilizing effect on the whole society in all kinds of ways. So lots of things that by now are almost taken for granted were heretical in the 1960s. We had anti-sodomy laws until not many years ago.
Noam Chomsky