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There are some very general ideas that people can keep in mind they're kind of truisms. It's only worth mentioning them because they're always denied.

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
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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In the early 1940s, as a young teenager, I was utterly appalled by the racist and jingoist hysteria of the anti-Japanese propaganda. The Germans were evil, but treated with some respect: They were, after all, blond Aryan types, just like our imaginary self-image. Japanese were mere vermin, to be crushed like ants.
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South America goes its own way dramatically in international affairs.
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We should therefore be opposed to institutional barriers to that freedom: Military dictatorships, for example. Or states run by a Central Committee.
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If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.
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Its true that contemporary technology permits decentralization, it also permits centralization. It depends on how you use the technology.
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The respected intellectuals are those who conform and serve power interests.
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The tendencies are considerably weaker in the natural sciences, which, for the past several centuries, have survived and flourished through such constant challenge, and therefore, at best, seek to encourage it. Serving the status quo in political and socioeconomic realms is a different matter.
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In many respects, the United States is the freest country in the world. I don't just mean in terms of limits on state coercion, though that's true too, but also in terms of individual relations. The United States comes closer to classlessness in terms of interpersonal relations than virtually any society.
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All forms of involuntary servitude are prohibited, not only slavery but also conscription, forced association, and forced welfare distribution.
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The very properties of the human mind that provide an enormous scope for human genius in some domains will serve as barriers to progress in other domains, just as the properties that enable each child to acquire a complex and highly articulated human language block the acquisition of other imaginable linguistic systems.
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Surely few if any readers have come across the sentence they are now reading, and someone who had by chance heard or seen it could not possibly remember such a fact.
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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.
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If you're worried about the deficit, pay attention to the fact that it's almost all attributable to military spending and the totally dysfunctional health program.
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Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.
Noam Chomsky
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One measure for promoting both stability and fairness across financial market segments is a small sales tax on all financial transactions.
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It is true that classical libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty, diversity, and free association.
Noam Chomsky
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By that time [1966], we did begin to get some protests [against Vietnam War]. But not from liberal intellectuals they never opposed the war.
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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.
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The British had an even stronger [then America] business interest in Nazi Germany. And Benito Mussolini was greatly admired.
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Education is a system of imposed ignorance.
Noam Chomsky