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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: 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
Whether
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Essential
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Essentials
Well
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Treasured
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Preserved
Democracy
Threats
Values
Avoided

More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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There was great anxiety about Russian intervention in the recent German elections, perhaps contributing to the frightening surge of support for the right-wing nationalist, if not neo-fascist, Alternative for Germany.
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As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.
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Popular support for alternative energy has been very high for years. But it harms corporate profits.
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If Palestinian Authority refuse to join the US-run negotiations, their basis for support would collapse. They survive on donations essentially. Israel has made sure that it's not a productive economy.
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A language is not just words. It's a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It's all embodied in a language.
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Education is a system of imposed ignorance.
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Globalization is the result of powerful governments, especially that of the United States, pushing trade deals and other accords down the throats of the world’s people to make it easier for corporations and the wealthy to dominate the economies of nations around the world without having obligations to the peoples of those nations.
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Immediately after 11 September, the U.S. closed down the Somali charitable network Al-Barakaat on grounds that it was financing terror. This achievement was hailed one of the great successes of the 'war on terror.' In contrast, Washington's withdrawal of its charges as without merit a year later aroused little notice.
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South America goes its own way dramatically in international affairs.
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When I wrote about the Spanish Civil War many years later, I used documents that I picked up when I was a child, as a lot hadn't been published (a lot more resources are available now).
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One of the real problems of society is that its far too atomized, what sociologists call secondary associations.
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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.
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The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.
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If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
Noam Chomsky
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The very idea that there should be a certain class of people who give orders by virtue of their ownership of wealth and another huge class who take on orders and follow them because of their lack of access to wealth and power, that's unacceptable. So, sure it should be abolished.
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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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You never really saw the racism in Europe in the past because it was so homogeneous. When everyone is blonde and blue-eyed, you don't see racism. But as soon as there was the beginnings of immigration, it just came out very dramatically.
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I didn't pay my taxes for years.
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If workers are more insecure, that's very 'healthy' for the society, because if workers are insecure, they won't ask for wages, they won't go on strike, they won't call for benefits they'll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that's optimal for corporations' economic health.
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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.
Noam Chomsky