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The intellectual is an individual with a specific public role in society that cannot be reduced simply to . . a faceless professional.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 95
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
Computer Scientist
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Human Rights Activist
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Opinion Journalist
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East Oak Lane
Philadelphia
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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While language can surely be used for communication (as can much else), communication probably has no special role in its design or evolution.
Noam Chomsky
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From a comparative perspective, the United States is unusual if not unique in the lack of restraints on freedom of expression. It is also unusual in the range and effectiveness of methods employed to restrain freedom of thought... Where the voice of the people is heard, elite groups must insure their voice says the right things.
Noam Chomsky
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Free markets are based on the free circulation of labor. If you don't have free circulation of labor, you don't have free markets.
Noam Chomsky
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Modern China one also finds many things that are really quite admirable.
Noam Chomsky
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Barack Obama is an opportunist, mostly supported by the financial institutions. He had no positions on anything. He's very intelligent. If you look at his program, almost no substance. Change, hope, what's that? I mean, he had some policies, but it was almost certain that he would give them up instantly, which he did.
Noam Chomsky
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How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me.
Noam Chomsky
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Latin America is all moving to the left, from Venezuela to Argentina with rare exceptions, but there's a good left and a bad left.
Noam Chomsky
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Most of intellectuals are false prophets, flatterers of the court. The real prophets are the exception and treated badly. How badly they're treated depends on the society. Like in Eastern Europe, they were treated very badly. In Latin America, they were slaughtered.
Noam Chomsky
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The Democrats have pretty much given up on the white working class. That would require a commitment to economic issues and that's not their concern.
Noam Chomsky
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Freedom without opportunity is a devil's gift, and the refusal to provide such opportunities is criminal
Noam Chomsky
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Andorrans deserve much better than the rule of superstitious hysterics and extreme authoritarians, who try to instill obedience to their Holy Texts and chosen Divinities - and we should not fail to see that the terms are appropriate, if anything too kind.
Noam Chomsky
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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
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I don't see how one can believe in organized religion. What does it mean to believe in an organization? One can join it, support it, oppose it, accept its doctrines or reject them. There are many kinds of organized religion. People associate themselves with some of them, or not, for all sorts of reasons, maybe belief in some of their doctrines
Noam Chomsky
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Should people be mere interested spectators of action, not participants, restricted to lending their weight periodically to one or another sector of the responsible men, as advocates of manufacture of consent have recommended? Or should their rights transcend these highly restricted bounds?
Noam Chomsky
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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
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In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival.
Noam Chomsky
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States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.
Noam Chomsky
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U.S. has no feudal background, so institutions that remained in place in Europe did not remain in place here.
Noam Chomsky
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Obama's latest line is that he didn't establish a red line but the world did through its conventions on chemical warfare.
Noam Chomsky
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Democracy was regarded as entering into a crisis in the 1960s. The crisis was that large segments of the population were becoming organized and active and trying to participate in the political arena.
Noam Chomsky