Quote

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

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
Role
Intellectual
Roles
Simply
Public
Faceless
Society
Reduced
Individual
Specific
Cannot
Professional

More quotes by Noam Chomsky

Image
The United States is a very insular society. Most people know very little about the outside world and don't care that much. They're concerned with their own affairs.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The focus on creativity and independence exists in pockets of resistance in the educational system, which, to thrive, should be integrated with the needs and concerns of the great majority of the population. One finds them everywhere.
Noam Chomsky
Image
There are no conservatives in the United States. The United States does not have a conservative tradition. The people who call themselves conservatives, like the Heritage Foundation or Gingrich, are believers in -- are radical statists. They believe in a powerful state, but a welfare state for the rich.
Noam Chomsky
Image
In general, we should be able to agree that those who have greater opportunities and face fewer impediments have a greater responsibility to do more to help achieve such ends.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The war against working people should be understood to be a real war…. Specifically in the U.S., which happens to have a highly class-conscious business class…. And they have long seen themselves as fighting a bitter class war, except they don’t want anybody else to know about it.
Noam Chomsky
Image
If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
Noam Chomsky
Image
It is one thing for the institution to offer space for serious engagement, in thought and action, and to encourage free and independent use of such opportunities it is something else for the university to become engaged as an institution, beyond a fairly narrow range where true consensus exists, and even that raises questions.
Noam Chomsky
Image
[Barack] Obama was reaching a point [with Syria bombing] where he might not have been able to carry it off.He was losing support internally, and was compelled to send the vote to Congress, and it looked as if he was going to be defeated, which would have been a very serious blow to his presidency, to his authority.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Millions of people are getting the vote, and we have to educate them to keep them from our throats. In other words, we have to train them in obedience and servility, so they're not going to think through the way the world works and come after our throats.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Popular support for alternative energy has been very high for years. But it harms corporate profits.
Noam Chomsky
Image
I don't see much use in general slogans. Sometimes it is worth resisting evil with lesser evil, very commonly in fact.
Noam Chomsky
Image
You keep plugging away--that's the way social change takes place. That's the way every social change in history has taken place: by a lot of people, who nobody ever heard of, doing work.
Noam Chomsky
Image
We have this huge, massive information, but what is it that matters? What doesn't matter? What makes sense, what doesn't make sense? You have to have a framework for understanding and of interpretation in order to make use of the information.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The change between horse and buggy to automobile is a big change and there hasn't been a major change since.
Noam Chomsky
Image
I think there are all kinds of intrusions into private rights that make use of contemporary technology.
Noam Chomsky
Image
We could not bring democracy to South Vietnam at a cost that we were willing to accept. So it was a disaster. That' is the left extreme.
Noam Chomsky
Image
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
Image
The Republican Party among the public is a minority party.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Take a look at public opinion. About 70 percent of the population, in the polls, said the [Vietnam ] war was fundamentally wrong and immoral, not a mistake. And that attitude lasted as long as polls were taken in the early '80s.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The tendencies are considerably weaker in the natural sciences, which, for the past several centuries, have survived and flourished through such constant challenge, and therefore, at best, seek to encourage it. Serving the status quo in political and socioeconomic realms is a different matter.
Noam Chomsky