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In fact, when drugs are legalized, use sometimes goes down, it's been claimed. Part of the reason is that teenage kids use illicit drugs because they are illicit. They are thumbing their noses at society. If they were legal, they might not.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
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Suppose that insect wings developed primarily as thermoregulators and then were used for skimming and finally flying, evolving along the way. What would they be for? Or what is the skeleton for? For keeping one upright, protecting organs, storing calcium, making blood cells...?
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In fact, I was in a lab that was a hundred percent funded by the Pentagon, and it was one of the centers of the organized antiwar resistance movement.
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Venezuela is independent. It's diversifying its exports to a limited extent, instead of just being dependent on exports to the United States. And it's initiating moves toward Latin American integration and independence. It's what they call a Bolivarian alternative and the United States doesn't like any of that.
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Given their unusual privilege, Western intellectuals can realistically accomplish a great deal. The limits are imposed by will more than objective circumstances. And about human will predictions are without value.
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My linguistics is pretty theoretical.
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Right now, we happen to be in a general period of regression, not just in education. A lot of what's happening is sort of backlash to the 60s the 60s were a democratizing period.
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It's not a free trade agreement. It has virtually nothing to do with free trade... It's a protectionist agreement it's anti free-trade.
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It's very hard to look in the mirror. We all know this. It's much easier to have illusions about yourself. And in particular, when you think, well, I'm going to believe what I like, but I'll say what the powerful want, you do that over time, and you believe what you say.
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If [Respulicans] can't get rid of [Obamacare], they're going to have to tell their base, we've been lying to you for the last five years. So they're willing to go to almost any extent to do that. That's unusual, in fact I think it's unique in the history of modern parliamentary systems. And it's very dangerous for the country and for the world.
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Occupying armies have responsibilities, not rights. Their primary responsibility is to withdraw as quickly and expeditiously as possible, in a manner determined by the occupied population.
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If you look at say, England and Germany a century ago, which had the most advanced navies then, they were dealing with extremely tricky technological problems. Putting a huge gun on a moving platform and ensuring that it could hit another moving target was one of the hardest technical problems of the early twentieth century.
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The entire socioeconomic system is based on production for profit and a growth imperative that cannot be sustained.
Noam Chomsky
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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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You know, we have little bits of understanding, glimpses, a little bit of light here and there, but there's a tremendous amount of darkness, which is a challenge. I think life would be pretty boring if we understood everything. It's better if we don't understand anything and know that we don't, that's the important part.
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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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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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I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.
Noam Chomsky
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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.
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There is a big difference between tweeting to your friend about something that is happening and having a real personal relationship with people.
Noam Chomsky
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I know of people whose actions and words I admire and respect. Some are called intellectuals, some are not.
Noam Chomsky