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If the authors and custodians of history turn out to have an attractive image, it is only reasonable to look beyond and ask whether the image they construct is accurate.

Noam Chomsky

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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
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Accurate
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Attractive
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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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
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Arab public opinion does not regard Iran as a hostile entity. In fact it's so supportive of Iran that a majority would think the place would be better off if Iran had nuclear weapons. The main enemies are the United States and Isreal, in the 80, 90 percent range.
Noam Chomsky
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The similarity is that concentration of capital influences virtually everything that goes on. It influences the way the media functions, it very powerfully influences how the government works and it of course influences corporate sector elements, like say how Google or Amazon present materials that reach the public.
Noam Chomsky
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Half the population hold that the government is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves, as polls regularly show.
Noam Chomsky
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It's only terrorism if they do it to us. When we do much worse to them, it's not terrorism.
Noam Chomsky
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The 'corporatization of America' during the past century has been an attack on democracy.
Noam Chomsky
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You don't get to be a respected intellectual by uttering truisms in monosyllables.
Noam Chomsky
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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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Governments are not representative.
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.
Noam Chomsky
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The threat and use of violence is stimulating nuclear proliferation along with jihadi terrorism.
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'm sorry to say it has some historical analogs. It's kind of reminiscent of what happened in Germany in the late Weimar years.
Noam Chomsky
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A woman was the property of her father or her husband and that remained true right into the twentieth century. It wasn't until 1975 that women had a guaranteed right to serve on federal juries.
Noam Chomsky
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We have to recognize that there is a range of interests, like there isn't a single corporate interest and a single state interest, so there's a range. In addition to that, there is the fact of professional integrity.
Noam Chomsky
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When leaders carry out policies for decades that have no consequences for the stated goal and are very costly, you have to ask whether they are telling you the truth or whether the policies are for a different goal, because they are not reducing drug use.
Noam Chomsky
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One of the truths about the world is that there are two superpowers, one a huge power which happens to have its boot on your neck another, a smaller power which happens to have its boot on other people's necks. I think that anyone in the Third World would be making a grave error if they succumbed to illusions about these matters
Noam Chomsky
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The beauty of our system is that it isolates everybody. Each person is sitting alone in front of the tube, you know. It's very hard to have ideas or thoughts under those circumstances. You can't fight the world alone.
Noam Chomsky
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The two countries [Pakistan and India] have already come close to nuclear confrontation twice and this could get worse. So dealing with the relationship with India is extremely important.
Noam Chomsky
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Real schools ought to provide people with techniques of self-defense, but that would mean teaching the truth about the world and about the society, and schools couldn't survive very long if they did that.
Noam Chomsky