Quote

Plainly, children learn their language. I don't speak Swahili. And it cannot be that my language is 'an innate property of our brain.' Otherwise I would have been genetically programmed to speak (some variety of) English.

Noam Chomsky

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Noam Chomsky
Age: 96
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
Brain
Genetically
Learn
Programmed
Language
Plainly
Speak
Innate
Cannot
Variety
Children
Otherwise
Would
English
Property
Swahili

More quotes by Noam Chomsky

Image
There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious and unknown social laws.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The invasion of Panama, what was that? The U.S. killed, according to the Panamanians, 3,000 civilians. Maybe they're right. We don't investigate our own crimes, so nobody knows.
Noam Chomsky
Image
It was right after Woodrow Wilson's first serious post-World War I repression, which deported thousands of people, effectively destroyed unions and independent press, and so on. Right after that, the anti-immigration law was passed that remained in place until the 1960s.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Trump's principal policies make clear what's going to happen. This gives an opportunity. Right now it's going to take hard work, but it's possible that there could be a real revival of the labor movement.
Noam Chomsky
Image
In general, the attitude towards Nazi Germany was not that hostile, especially if you look at the U.S. State Department reports. In 1937 the State Department was describing Adolf Hitler as a moderate who was holding off the forces of the right and the left.
Noam Chomsky
Image
What can realistically be done depends on the historical moment. The same is true with regard to the agents.
Noam Chomsky
Image
After all, the internet originated around 1960 and wasn't privatized until 1995. That's thirty five years in the public domain during the hard, creative development period.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Occupy was not a movement, it was a tactic. You can't sit forever in a park near Wall Street. You can't do it for more than a few months. It was a tactic I had not predicted. If people asked me, I would have said don't do it. But it was a great success, an enormous success, with a big impact on people's thinking, on people's actions.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The educational system is pretty much geared to passing the next exam. You're educated to pass tests and not to understand.
Noam Chomsky
Image
People will find some ways of identifying themselves, becoming associated with others, taking part in something. They're going to do it some way or other. If they don't have the options of participation in labor unions, political organizations that actually function, they'll find other ways. Religious fundamentalism is a classic example.
Noam Chomsky
Image
When I am at home, I never watch TV, but when I am abroad in a hotel I take a look at the BBC to find out what's going on.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Power has to be protected from scrutiny. That's the principle of every dictatorship, of every autocracy. You hear it from high priests at Harvard and every government department, that power has to be kept secret otherwise it will fade and it won't work. But Bradley Manning is violating that principle.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The general principle is that the victors don't look at themselves or concede anything. The defeated typically have to, except when it's beneficial to the powerful for them not to.
Noam Chomsky
Image
The former colonies, in Latin America in particular, have a better chance than ever before to overcome centuries of subjugation, violence and foreign intervention, which they have so far survived as dependencies with islands of luxury in a sea of misery.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Sea level rise and destruction of water resources as glaciers melt alone may have horrendous human consequences.
Noam Chomsky
Image
Should a community... be free to enact legislation to say they don't want blacks? Now that's illegal. Fifty years ago it was legal. Is that progress or is that regress?
Noam Chomsky
Image
Anarcho-syndic alism took for granted that working people ought to control their own work, its conditions, the enterprises in which they work, along with communities, so they should be associated with one another in free associations, and democracy of that kind should be the foundational elements of a more general free society.
Noam Chomsky
Image
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
Image
I've already supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries.
Noam Chomsky