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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

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
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East Oak Lane
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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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.
Noam Chomsky
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Immediately after 11 September, the U.S. closed down the Somali charitable network Al-Barakaat on grounds that it was financing terror. This achievement was hailed one of the great successes of the 'war on terror.' In contrast, Washington's withdrawal of its charges as without merit a year later aroused little notice.
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We can imagine a society in which no one could survive as a social being because it does not correspond to biologically determined perceptions and human social needs. For historical reasons, existing societies might have such properties, leading to various forms of pathology.
Noam Chomsky
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It seems self-evident that we should want people to be free, to be able to play an active part in making decisions about matters of concern to them, to the largest possible extent.
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I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.
Noam Chomsky
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It is reported that about 30% of the world's population is unemployed. That's worse than the Great Depression, but it's now an international phenomenon.
Noam Chomsky
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What's called Obamacare is an effort to mildly change this [health-care system], not change it as far as it should go or as much as the population wants it to go, but to make it a little better and a little more affordable.
Noam Chomsky
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We're now in a situation in which Capital is highly mobile and Labour is basically immobile.
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The people I find most impressive are generally unknown at the time of their actions and forgotten in history.
Noam Chomsky
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Whatever the reasons may be, I was very much affected by events of the 1930s - the Spanish Civil War, for example, though I was barely literate.
Noam Chomsky
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What the [James] Monroe Doctrine stated, in effect, is that the US should dominate the hemisphere.
Noam Chomsky
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Sooner or later, jihadist-style terror and WMD are going to come together and the consequences could be horrendous.
Noam Chomsky
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Workers and their families may starve to death in the New World Order of economic rationality, but diamond necklaces are cheaper in elegant New York shops, thanks to the miracle of the market.
Noam Chomsky
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If current tendencies persist, the outcome will be disastrous before too long. Large parts of the world will become barely habitable affecting hundreds of millions of people, along with other disasters that we can barely contemplate.
Noam Chomsky
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Peter Kropotkin was surely on the left. He was one of the founders of what is now called 'sociobiology' or 'evolutionary psychology' with his book Mutual Aid, arguing that human nature had evolved in ways conducive to the communitarian anarchism that he espoused.
Noam Chomsky
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Those who actually do have a valid claim to such special competence have a particular obligation to make very clear to the general public the limits of what is understood at any serious level these limits are typically very narrow in matters of significance in human affairs.
Noam Chomsky
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Legalizing marijuana would make a lot of sense, I don't think there's a single case of marijuana overdose on record and tens of millions of users. It's much less dangerous than alcohol, for example.
Noam Chomsky
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South America goes its own way dramatically in international affairs.
Noam Chomsky
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In many respects, the United States is the freest country in the world. I don't just mean in terms of limits on state coercion, though that's true too, but also in terms of individual relations. The United States comes closer to classlessness in terms of interpersonal relations than virtually any society.
Noam Chomsky
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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