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Unaccountable private power concentrations that dominate economic and social life have the means to seek to regiment the public mind, and become tools and tyrants of government, in James Madison's memorable phrase, as he warned of the threats he discerned to the democratic experiment if private powers were granted free rein.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 95
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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[With] military threats, you can see them actually, you can imagine it. People don't think about it enough. But if you think about it for a minute, you can see that a nuclear attack could be the end of everything.
Noam Chomsky
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Markets have built in inefficiencies, serious inefficiencies which are well known.
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Free speech has been used by the Supreme Court to give immense power to the wealthiest members of our society.
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As long as individuals are compelled to rent themselves on the market to those who are willing to hire them, as long as their role in production is simply that of ancillary tools, then there are striking elements of coercion and oppression that make talk of democracy very limited, if even meaningful.
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The U.S. has the most dysfunctional healthcare system in the industrial world, has about twice the per capita costs, and some of the worst outcomes. It's also the only privatized system.
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You never know how [Donald Trump] is going to react. When he learned for example that he'd lost the election by about three million votes, his instant reaction was insanity you know, three to five million illegal immigrants somehow were organized in some incredible fashion to vote.
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Libertarian socialism is properly to be regarded as the inheritor of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment.
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In the primary debates for the 2016 election, every single Republican candidate was a climate change denier, with one exception, John Kasich - the rational moderate - who said it may be happening but we shouldn't do anything about it. For a long time, the media have downplayed the issue.
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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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Mexico is a pretty poor country, but they are maintaining a free, high quality public education system, not for everyone of course but pretty substantial.
Noam Chomsky
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To some degree it matters who's in office, but it matters more how much pressure they're under from the public.
Noam Chomsky
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Globalization is the result of powerful governments, especially that of the United States, pushing trade deals and other accords down the throats of the world’s people to make it easier for corporations and the wealthy to dominate the economies of nations around the world without having obligations to the peoples of those nations.
Noam Chomsky
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Trump keeps the spotlight on himself with one act after another, assuming correctly that yesterday's antics will be swept aside by today's.
Noam Chomsky
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Pakistan is not a unified country. In large parts of the country, the state is regarded as a Punjabi state, not their (the people's) state.
Noam Chomsky
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Every great power, every aggressive power has always regarded itself as exceptional and as doing things only for the most moral ends.
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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Immediately after 11 September, the U.S. closed down the Somali charitable network Al-Barakaat on grounds that it was financing terror. This achievement was hailed one of the great successes of the 'war on terror.' In contrast, Washington's withdrawal of its charges as without merit a year later aroused little notice.
Noam Chomsky
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If you are giving a graduate course you don't try to impress the students with oratory, you try to challenge them, get them to question you.
Noam Chomsky
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In a moment of crisis, of which there are all too many, Russian military planners may conclude that lacking a deterrent, the only hope of survival is a first strike - which means the end for all of us.
Noam Chomsky
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In fact, the capitalist class in the '50s was sort of part of a social contract. It was part of the tenor of the times.
Noam Chomsky