Quote

I don't suggest that the observations are surprising or profound. Rather, they seem to me the merest truisms. I was not aware that [ Michel] Foucault had used the phrase speaking truth to power. I had thought it was an old Quaker phrase.

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
Suggest
Foucault
Rather
Surprising
Truisms
Thought
Phrases
Michel
Truth
Observation
Merest
Seems
Speaking
Truism
Power
Profound
Quaker
Used
Observations
Aware
Phrase
Seem

More quotes by Noam Chomsky

Image
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
Image
When I was ten years old I wanted to be a taxidermist for some reason, don't ask me why.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Because the 1979 strike against U.S. Steel in Youngstown, Ohio was an occupation - and actually, that's a model that really should be pursued now.They went on from striking to trying to have the workforce and the communities take over the abandoned factories that U.S. Steel was dismantling.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The basic idea which runs right through modern history and modern liberalism is that the public has got to be marginalized. The general public are viewed as no more than ignorant and meddlesome outsiders, a bewildered herd.
Noam Chomsky
Image
If the United States loses the economic weapons of control, it is very much weakened.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The neo-cons constitute a radical reactionary fringe of the planning spectrum, but the spectrum is narrow.
Noam Chomsky
Image
If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Colombia was a big wheat producer in the 1950's. That was eliminated by what sounds like a nice plan, called Food for Peace. It's a plan by which US taxpayers subsidized US agribusiness to send food to poor countries. This, of course, destroyed the domestic agricultural markets of these countries, opening these markets to US agribusiness.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Nothing is more inspiring to see how poor and suffering people, living under conditions incomparably worse than we endure, continue quietly and unpretentiously with courageous and committed struggle for justice and dignity.
Noam Chomsky
Image
By most accounts, Aristide is the most popular figure in Haiti.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Markets also have a very bad psychological effect. They drive people to a conception of themselves and society in which you're only after your own good, not the good of others and that's extremely harmful.
Noam Chomsky
Image
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
Image
Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.
Noam Chomsky
Image
It is only natural to expect that guilds will tend to protect their turf and to resist challenge.
Noam Chomsky
Image
We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won't be a world - at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others.
Noam Chomsky
Image
A democracy barely functions under the neoliberal system.
Noam Chomsky
Image
In fact, it's pretty dramatic when you get to 1975, very revealing, the [Vietnam] war ends. Everybody had to write something about the war, what it meant. You also had polls of public opinion, and they're dramatically different.
Noam Chomsky
Image
There is a considerable polarization taking place here, increasing the gap between rich and poor. It's most dramatic in Third World countries, of course, but in the rich countries it's also very noticeable.
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