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If you accept the institutional lunacy, then the policies are rational.

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
Lunacy
Institutional
Policies
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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[After Vietnam] the type of interventions that are carried out are designed so as not to elicit public reactions.
Noam Chomsky
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The missile defense component is a minor feature that nobody takes very seriously. Nobody really believes that the US is trying to protect itself from North Korea. That's not serious. But the militarization of space is quite serious.
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It makes sense for societies to make education compulsory for children. Children are vulnerable. They can't make decisions. But the decisions can't all be left in the hands of the parents. They can be irresponsible too.
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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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It doesn't matter how much you learn in school it's whether you learn how to go on and do things by yourself. And that can be done at any level.
Noam Chomsky
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Peace is preferable to war. But it’s not an absolute value, and so we always ask, “What kind of peace?
Noam Chomsky
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The beauty of our system is that it isolates everybody. Each person is sitting alone in front of the tube, you know. It's very hard to have ideas or thoughts under those circumstances. You can't fight the world alone.
Noam Chomsky
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Social and political issues in general seem to me fairly simple the effort to obfuscate them in esoteric and generally vacuous theory is one of the contributions of the intelligentsia to enhancing their own power and the power of those they serve.
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.
Noam Chomsky
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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.
Noam Chomsky
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Anarchists try to identify power structures. They urge those exercising power to justify themselves. This justification does not succeed most of the time.
Noam Chomsky
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The British had an even stronger [then America] business interest in Nazi Germany. And Benito Mussolini was greatly admired.
Noam Chomsky
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Capitalism denies the right to live. You have only the right to remain on the labour market.
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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The Iranian government is undoubtedly a severe danger to its own population, but not beyond that.
Noam Chomsky
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History records endless struggles to enlarge those realms, inspiring ones it also records painful reversals and setbacks.
Noam Chomsky
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Why should workers agree to be slaves in a basically authoritarian structure? They should have control over it themselves. Why shouldn't communities have a dominant voice in running the institutions that affect their lives?
Noam Chomsky
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[According to the rigid dogma] we have to believe the United States would have so-called liberated Iraq even if its main products were lettuce and pickles and the main energy resource of the world were in central Africa.
Noam Chomsky
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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.
Noam Chomsky
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The Saudi, Arabian ruling class, for example, have rights because they are performing a service for Western power, ensuring that oil profits go to the West and not to the regional population. The local gendarmes like Israel, Turkey and so on have rights, at least in their ruling groups. Others do not.
Noam Chomsky