Quote

If you're in favour of any policy - reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever - if you're at least minimally moral, it's because you think it's somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.

Noam Chomsky

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Good
Revolution
Regression
Think
Policy
Favour
Thinking
Least
Conform
People
Moral
Stability
Whatever
Fundamental
Means
Reform
Nature
Fundamentals
Minimally
Mean
Somehow
Conforming

More quotes by Noam Chomsky

Image
I agree with Bill Clinton that US forces should not be sent to Haiti, but not for his reasons.
Noam Chomsky
Image
For thirty years, Isreal has been highjacking ships in international waters, killing people, taking hostages, bringing them to Israel, putting them in secret prisons, all with the help of the United States. That's serious piracy.
Noam Chomsky
Image
A colonial war is a very dirty kind of war. You're not fighting armed forces. You're fighting mostly unarmed people. And to fight that kind of war requires professional killers, which means mercenaries.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Fed and electoral college could use some tinkering, but they are not the source of the problems.
Noam Chomsky
Image
I do not see how we can rationally oppose high speed rail because of the environmental and other costs without considering the social and human consequences of the radical elimination of transportation that this entails.
Noam Chomsky
Image
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
Image
Every wave of immigrants who came [to America] were treated pretty badly, but when they all finally became integrated, all of us became Anglo-Saxons.
Noam Chomsky
Image
A dramatic, evocative, thoughtful and very accessible account of one of the most important stories of the century - and one of the most ominous, unless citizens are aroused to action to rein in abusive state power.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The basic principle, rarely violated, is that what conflicts with the requirements of power and privilege does not exist.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The market is regarded as democratic because everybody has a vote. Of course, some have more votes than others because your votes depend on the number of dollars you have, but everybody participates and therefore it's called democratic.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Freedom without opportunity is a devil's gift.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The Republican Primaries were quite interesting. The establishment had its candidate, [Mitt] Romney, a kind of a Wall Street lawyer and investor, and they wanted him in. But the base didn't want him.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Power has to be protected from scrutiny. That's the principle of every dictatorship, of every autocracy. You hear it from high priests at Harvard and every government department, that power has to be kept secret otherwise it will fade and it won't work. But Bradley Manning is violating that principle.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Suppose that we believe what we are taught. . . . destroying the environment and militarizing outer space are rational policies . . . of institutional lunacy.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Suppose that the US really is trying to get rid of drugs in Colombia. Does Colombia then have the right to fumigate tobacco farms in Kentucky? They are producing a lethal substance far more dangerous than cocaine. More Colombians die from tobacco-related illnesses than Americans die from cocaine. Of course, Colombia has no right to do that.
Noam Chomsky
Image
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.
Noam Chomsky
Image
If humans are organisms like every other organism - which they are - then we should expect that if there are some domains where real scientific progress is possible, then there are others where it is not.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Physics and those parts of other fields that grow out of physics - chemistry, the structure of big molecules - in those domains, there is a lot of progress. In many other domains, there is very little progress in developing real scientific understanding.
Noam Chomsky
Image
People tend to rally around power.
Noam Chomsky
Image
English is a second language in most of the educated sectors of Europe and much of the world. But maybe in the future Chinese will be. But I doubt that national languages will disappear. In fact, to some extent they're becoming more diverse, like in Europe.
Noam Chomsky