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If the rewiring of the brain that yielded recursive generation of hierarchically structured expressions took place in an individual, not a group (and there seems to be no coherent alternative), then interaction must have been a later phenomenon.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 95
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
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When I look at public opinion, I'm not far out of the mainstream. I'm in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I've ever said.
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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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Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.
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The worst drug of all by far is tobacco the death toll from tobacco is just overwhelming.
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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.
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Real wages for male workers in the United States are about what they were in the '60s.
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Barack Obama is an opportunist, mostly supported by the financial institutions. He had no positions on anything. He's very intelligent. If you look at his program, almost no substance. Change, hope, what's that? I mean, he had some policies, but it was almost certain that he would give them up instantly, which he did.
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US wars are going to be against much weaker enemies. And they have to be won quickly and decisively before a popular reaction develops.
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While the state can coerce, with some exceptions (like North Korea) it seems to me misleading to think of it as capable of enslavement.
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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.
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Who wrote the Bible? Current scholarship, to my knowledge, assumes that the material that constitutes the Old Testament was put together from various oral and folk traditions (many of them going far back) in the Hellenistic period. That was one of several currents, of which the collection that formed the New Testament was another.
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The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.
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Public opinion can be influential, the media can be influential.
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Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state...
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The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.
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Another problem is the confrontation with India. Pakistan just cannot survive if it continues to do so (continue this confrontation).
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In a really business-run society like the United States, the business elites are deeply committed to class struggle and are engaged in it all the time. They're instinctive Marxists.
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What matters is what happens among the powerful.
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Anything feasible and potentially effective should be explored.
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I don't see how one can believe in organized religion. What does it mean to believe in an organization? One can join it, support it, oppose it, accept its doctrines or reject them. There are many kinds of organized religion. People associate themselves with some of them, or not, for all sorts of reasons, maybe belief in some of their doctrines
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