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Those who actually do have a valid claim to such special competence have a particular obligation to make very clear to the general public the limits of what is understood at any serious level these limits are typically very narrow in matters of significance in human affairs.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 95
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
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East Oak Lane
Philadelphia
Avram Noam Chomsky
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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It's a lesser-known story, but the Japanese government (after the Russian-Nazi pact, which split Poland) did allow Polish Jews to come to Japan, with the expectation that they would then be sent to the United States. But they weren't accepted, so they stayed in Japan.
Noam Chomsky
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International affairs is very much run like the mafia. The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn't pay his protection money. You have to have obedience otherwise the idea can spread that you don't have to listen to the orders and it can spread to important places.
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If North Korea doesn't have a deterrent, they will be wiped out.
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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
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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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Some kind of settlement in Kashmir is crucial for both countries [Pakistan and India]. It's also tearing India apart with horrible atrocities in the region which is controlled by Indian armed forces.
Noam Chomsky
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Education is a system of imposed ignorance.
Noam Chomsky
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Iceland is capitalist social democratic, rather like the Nordic countries generally. The capital had a mayor who is an anarchist, but the city has been nothing like that. In fact a few years ago it was super-neoliberal, which led to the crash.
Noam Chomsky
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Mr. Mijanovi and those associated with him are the hope and the conscience of the Yugoslav revolution.
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Yes, and Syrians. There is a horrible crisis there and the United States has admitted virtually none of the refugees.
Noam Chomsky
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One of the real problems of society is that its far too atomized, what sociologists call secondary associations.
Noam Chomsky
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For the last couple of hundred years, there have been struggles about this. Even the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the constitution talk about personal rights.
Noam Chomsky
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A basic principle of modern state capitalism is that costs and risks are socialized to the extent possible, while profit is privatized.
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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More generally, independent farmers had to be trained to become docile workers in the expanding industrial system. It was necessary to drive from their heads evil ideas, such as the belief that wage labor was not much different from chattel slavery. That continues to the present, now sometimes taking the form of an attack on public education.
Noam Chomsky
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The internet is something created largely by public funding.
Noam Chomsky
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I don't use the social media but I can see the effects in my own correspondence. I get a ton of correspondence. It used to be hard copy and now it's a very limited amount of actual letters people write. So it's mostly email.
Noam Chomsky
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The Iraq War is the first war in history, in which there were huge demonstrations before the war was launched, not beginning five years later and then being broken up. All of these are changes, and the people who are writing in journals today lived through these changes.
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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Palestinians have no wealth or power.
Noam Chomsky