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There certainly are those who worship the state much as divinities are worshipped. Not just the state but even leaders.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
Computer Scientist
Historian
Human Rights Activist
Linguist
Media Critic
Opinion Journalist
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East Oak Lane
Philadelphia
Avram Noam Chomsky
A. Noam Chomsky
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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Our minds are specifically adapted to developing certain theories, and we have a science if the theories that are available to our minds happen to be close to true. Well, there is no particular reason to suppose that the intersection of true theories and theories that are accessible to the mind is very large. It may not be very large.
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Social and political issues in general seem to me fairly simple the effort to obfuscate them in esoteric and generally vacuous theory is one of the contributions of the intelligentsia to enhancing their own power and the power of those they serve.
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Popular support for alternative energy has been very high for years. But it harms corporate profits.
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If you accept the institutional lunacy, then the policies are rational.
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If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that's something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can't live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.
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It's a near miracle that nuclear war has so far been avoided.
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People are dangerous. If they're able to involve themselves in issues that matter, they may change the distribution of power, to the detriment of those who are rich and privileged.
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A democracy barely functions under the neoliberal system.
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Yes, and Syrians. There is a horrible crisis there and the United States has admitted virtually none of the refugees.
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I think such an inquiry will reveal a rather different picture: namely, it will reveal a very strong tendency for the intellectuals who are respected and privileged to be those who subordinate themselves to power.
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Look, the United States doesn't have political parties. In other countries, take say Europe, you can be an active member of the political party. Here, the only thing in a political party is gearing to elections, not the other things you do. So it's basically, a way of making people passive, submissive objects.
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Colombia is potentially a very wealthy country. It has tremendous resources, but its wealth is highly concentrated. Most of the population lives in misery, which has led to violent confrontation throughout the century.
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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.
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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.
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The two tendencies are antithetical in significant respects. These are distinctions that should be kept in mind, however one feels that the problems and dilemmas that constantly arise should be resolved.
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Anti-union propaganda has been considerably more successful here [ in the U.S.] than in Europe, even among working people who would benefit [from] unions.
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As international support for Obama's decision to attack Syria has collapsed, along with the credibility of government claims, the administration has fallen back on a standard pretext for war crimes when all else fails: the credibility of the threats of the self-designated policeman of the world.
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The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself.
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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.
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Human needs are served by a sustainable lifestyle, almost by definition, if humans include coming generations. And a shift to such technologies as high-speed rail instead of maximizing fossil fuel use, and solar energy, is not relentless resource extraction.
Noam Chomsky