Quote

The threat is that the public will know what the government is up to. Any system of power is going to want to keep free from public surveillance, that's natural. Its shouldn't be but, its very natural.

Noam Chomsky

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Noam Chomsky
Age: 96
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
Power
Surveillance
Government
Shouldn
Going
Threat
System
Public
Free
Natural
Keep

More quotes by Noam Chomsky

Image
Its minority rule and majority limited rights. In fact it's set up that way. If you read the framers of the constitution, including James Madison, he was pretty clear about it.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Mexico is a pretty poor country, but they are maintaining a free, high quality public education system, not for everyone of course but pretty substantial.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Nicaragua dealt with the problem of terrorism in exactly the right way. It followed international law and treaty obligations. It collected evidence, brought the evidence to the highest existing tribunal, the International Court of Justice, and received a verdict - which, of course, the U.S. dismissed with contempt.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Regulate the banks, get money out of elections raise the minimum wage, environmental issues. They're all very important and the Occupy movement made a difference. It shifted not only the discourse but to some extent, action on these issues.
Noam Chomsky
Image
[Donald] Trump has been very inconsistent on many things on Twitter he's been all over the place, but some of it is very consistent. That is: Do nothing about climate change except make it worse. And he's not just speaking for himself, but for the whole Republican Party, the whole leadership. It's already had impact, it will have worse impact.
Noam Chomsky
Image
... the media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly.
Noam Chomsky
Image
We don't use the term 'working class' here because it's a taboo term. You're supposed to say 'middle class,' because it helps diminish the understanding that there's a class war going on.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state...
Noam Chomsky
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If you're working 50 hours a week to try to maintain family income, and your children have the kinds of aspirations that come from being flooded with television from age one, and associations have declined, people end up hopeless, even though they have every option.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another.
Noam Chomsky
Image
You never know how [Donald Trump] is going to react. When he learned for example that he'd lost the election by about three million votes, his instant reaction was insanity you know, three to five million illegal immigrants somehow were organized in some incredible fashion to vote.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Anti-union propaganda has been considerably more successful here [ in the U.S.] than in Europe, even among working people who would benefit [from] unions.
Noam Chomsky
Image
In general, the attitude towards Nazi Germany was not that hostile, especially if you look at the U.S. State Department reports. In 1937 the State Department was describing Adolf Hitler as a moderate who was holding off the forces of the right and the left.
Noam Chomsky
Image
When something isn't constantly drummed-up by the media, [people] just don't know about it.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Personally, I am uneasy about the notion of a politically engaged university, for reasons I wrote about over 30 years ago, at the height of protest and resistance (reprinted in For Reasons of State).
Noam Chomsky
Image
I haven't seen any claim that Piraha lacks recursion, that is, that there are a finite number of sentences or sentence frames. If that's so, it would mean that the speakers of this language aren't making use of a capacity that they surely have, a normal situation plenty of people throughout history would drown if they fall into water.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The fact that all normal children acquire essentially comparable grammars of great complexity with remarkable rapidity suggests that human beings are somehow specially designed to do this, with data-handling or 'hypothesis-formulating' ability of unknown character and complexity.
Noam Chomsky
Image
In southern culture, possession of a gun became kind of a sign of manhood, not just because of slaves but other white men. If you had a gun, you're not going to push me around. You know, I'm not one of those guys you can kick in the face.
Noam Chomsky