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The answer to subversion of democracy is more democracy, more freedom, more justice.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
Computer Scientist
Historian
Human Rights Activist
Linguist
Media Critic
Opinion Journalist
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Philosopher
East Oak Lane
Philadelphia
Avram Noam Chomsky
A. Noam Chomsky
Chomsky
Subversion
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Answers
Democracy
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Freedom

More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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The book Manufacturing Consent, which I co-authored with Edward Herman, begins with a description of the structure and institutional setting of the commercial media, and then draws some rather simple-minded conclusions about what we would expect the media product to be, given these (not particularly controversial) conditions.
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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Social and political issues in general seem to me fairly simple the effort to obfuscate them in esoteric and generally vacuous theory is one of the contributions of the intelligentsia to enhancing their own power and the power of those they serve.
Noam Chomsky
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I wouldn't say that the efforts of academics to critique the media's messages are half-hearted. As far as I am aware, the efforts scarcely exist: very few even pay attention to the question.
Noam Chomsky
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Look, the United States doesn't have political parties. In other countries, take say Europe, you can be an active member of the political party. Here, the only thing in a political party is gearing to elections, not the other things you do. So it's basically, a way of making people passive, submissive objects.
Noam Chomsky
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Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.
Noam Chomsky
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Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.
Noam Chomsky
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In the late 1990s, some of the worst terrorist atrocities in the world were what the Turkish government itself called state terror, namely massive atrocities, 80 percent of the arms coming from the United States, millions of refugees, tens of thousands of people killed, hideous repression, that's international terror, and we can go on and on.
Noam Chomsky
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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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...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.
Noam Chomsky
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A default of the US government would not only be very harmful here, it would probably send the country back into deep recession, but it just might crash the international financial system.
Noam Chomsky
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It's not a matter of public relations and rhetorical style but of actions. It's the actions and policies under George W.Bush administration that have left the US government remarkably isolated, feared and often hated to an extent with no historical precedent.
Noam Chomsky
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The whole infrastructure of air travel was, and is, part of government policy. It is not a natural development of a free economic system - at least not in the way that is claimed. The same is true of the roads, of course.
Noam Chomsky
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Barron and Paul...rely on 'specialists' at the State and Defense Departments...Elsewhere in the media, similiar figures are bandied about, with equal credibility.
Noam Chomsky
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[Isaiah] Berlin's observation is accurate enough, and applies at home as well, and even more harshly for the reasons already mentioned: the apparatchiks and commissars could at least plead fear in extenuation.
Noam Chomsky
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A language is not just words. It's a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It's all embodied in a language.
Noam Chomsky
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If you want to scare people, you talk about evil.
Noam Chomsky
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If [Respulicans] can't get rid of [Obamacare], they're going to have to tell their base, we've been lying to you for the last five years. So they're willing to go to almost any extent to do that. That's unusual, in fact I think it's unique in the history of modern parliamentary systems. And it's very dangerous for the country and for the world.
Noam Chomsky
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In the case of [Antonio] Gramsci, the Fascist government agreed that he was a model intellectual in [Edward] Said's sense, and for that reason determined, in their words, that we must stop this brain from functioning for twenty years.
Noam Chomsky
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If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That's not going to happen if you care only about yourself.
Noam Chomsky