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Intellectuals (in the standard sense of the term, not [ Edward] Said's prescriptive sense) are the people who write history.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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The rise of what's called Islamic fundamentalism is to a significant extent a result of the collapse of secular nationalist alternatives which were either discredited internally or destroyed, leaving few other options. Something like that may be true of American society.
Noam Chomsky
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The US does not observe the free-trade principles. Those are for the weak. So agribusiness is highly subsidized and pours product into Mexico and drives out Mexican farmers. Maybe they have to go into the cities, and they don't have jobs to support them, so they flee across the border.
Noam Chomsky
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Right now, huge numbers of people cannot obtain even drinking water, and the situation is likely to become worse with predicted climate change and failure to take the actions that are necessary.
Noam Chomsky
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Enormous and growing parts of the population are basically superfluous for profit-making purposes. Along with this, the jail population is increasing very rapidly it's the highest in the industrial world by far. New and onerous crime bills are being passed to deal with this superfluous population.
Noam Chomsky
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The term 'globalisation' is conventionally used to refer to the specific form of investor-rights integration designed by wealth and power, for their own interests.
Noam Chomsky
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In the case of Yugoslavia v. NATO, one of the charges was genocide. The U.S. appealed to the court, saying that, by law, the United States is immune to the charge of genocide, self-immunized, and the court accepted that, so the case proceeded against the other NATO powers but not against the United States.
Noam Chomsky
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Washington basically works for the corporate sector and Silicon Valley, technically at least, is suppose to sponsor initiative in creativity, whether it does or not is another question.
Noam Chomsky
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Popular support for alternative energy has been very high for years. But it harms corporate profits.
Noam Chomsky
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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
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As far as DSA is concerned, I'm perfectly happy to be associated with it while disagreeing with a large part of the leadership.
Noam Chomsky
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It's perfectly obvious that there is some genetic factor that distinguishes humans from other animals and that it is language-specific. The theory of that genetic component, whatever it turns out to be, is what is called universal grammar.
Noam Chomsky
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In the 1960s, there was a point, 1968, '69, when there was a very strong antiwar movement against the war in Vietnam. But it's worth remembering that the war in Vietnam started - an outright war started in 1962.
Noam Chomsky
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The United States in many ways resembles a Third World country - far more elevated, but it has many of those structural characteristics: the extreme inequality of wealth, the deterioration of infrastructure because it only serves poor people, predatory operations, huge corruption, and so on.
Noam Chomsky
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Poor whites didn't have rights. They made all kind of restrictions on voting. So person meant relatively well - off, free white man.
Noam Chomsky
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Colombia is potentially a very wealthy country. It has tremendous resources, but its wealth is highly concentrated. Most of the population lives in misery, which has led to violent confrontation throughout the century.
Noam Chomsky
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Every wave of immigrants who came [to America] were treated pretty badly, but when they all finally became integrated, all of us became Anglo-Saxons.
Noam Chomsky
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A good education instills in you the intuitive comprehension - it becomes unconscious and reflexive - that you just don't think certain things, things that are threatening to power interests.
Noam Chomsky
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Nothing can justify crimes such as those of September 11, but we can think of the United States as an innocent victim only if we adopt the convenient path of ignoring the record of its actions and those of its allies, which are, after all, hardly a secret.
Noam Chomsky
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There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious and unknown social laws.
Noam Chomsky
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I have written occasionally on links between my scientific work and political thinking, but not much, because the links seem to me abstract and speculative.
Noam Chomsky