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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: 95
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
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East Oak Lane
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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I happen to agree with the anti-dictatorship policies, but I don't think it's the role of General Electric to support them or oppose them. They do of course, but I don't agree with that.
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Democracy is a danger to any powerful group.
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The invasion of Panama, what was that? The U.S. killed, according to the Panamanians, 3,000 civilians. Maybe they're right. We don't investigate our own crimes, so nobody knows.
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Hume's paradox does hold: power is in the hands of the governed. If they refuse to accept it, you're in trouble, no matter how many guns you have.
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If you assume there is no hope, you guarantee there will be no hope.
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...free enterprise, [is] a term that refers, in practice, to a system of public subsidy and private profit, with massive government intervention in the economy to maintain a welfare state for the rich.
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I agree with Bill Clinton that US forces should not be sent to Haiti, but not for his reasons.
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There's very little dislike of Americans in the world, shown by repeated polls, and the dissatisfaction - that is, the hatred and the anger - they come from acceptance of American values, not a rejection of them, and recognition that they're rejected by the U.S. government and by U.S. elites, which does lead to hatred and anger.
Noam Chomsky
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We're human beings we're not robots. And face-to-face contact is something totally different than typing a text message and then forgetting about it.
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I've often been struck by the extensive knowledge that people have of sports, and particularly, their self-confidence in discussing it with experts. . . . In contrast, when discussing matters of concern to human lives - their own and others - people tend to defer to experts.
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One measure for promoting both stability and fairness across financial market segments is a small sales tax on all financial transactions.
Noam Chomsky
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The United States has done some very good things in the world, and that does not change the fact that the World Court was quite correct in condemning the United States as an international terrorist state.
Noam Chomsky
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Work can be undertaken to create an authentic independent political party, a real party, based on popular participation from the ground up, not a top-down candidate producing organization like the two official parties, working from school boards to state legislatures and beyond. Not easy in the regressive U.S. political system, but not impossible.
Noam Chomsky
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As a tactic, violence is absurd. No one can compete with the Government in violence, and the resort to violence, which will surely fail, will simply frighten and alienate some who can be reached, and will further encourage the ideologists and administrators of forceful repression.
Noam Chomsky
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Radical activists can't ignore the fact that we live in this world, like it or not, and have to make difficult decisions about which paths are the best - or sometimes, the least harmful. There are no abstract formulas. Have to think through each case on its own.
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It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions - you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism.
Noam Chomsky
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The change between horse and buggy to automobile is a big change and there hasn't been a major change since.
Noam Chomsky
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The very properties of the human mind that provide an enormous scope for human genius in some domains will serve as barriers to progress in other domains, just as the properties that enable each child to acquire a complex and highly articulated human language block the acquisition of other imaginable linguistic systems.
Noam Chomsky
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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
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There is massive propaganda for everyone to consume. Consumption is good for profits and consumption is good for the political establishment.
Noam Chomsky