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We must present a national persona of being irrational and vindictive, because that's going to terrify people. And then, they'll back off. And this is not [Donald] Trump, this is [Bill] Clinton. It's not [Richard] Nixon, you know. We have to be irrational and vindictive, because that's going to frighten people.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 95
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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Sectors of power are not going to favor the flourishing of dissidence.
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Academics are mostly professionals, involved in their work and other concerns of their own, with no particular interest in the workings of the ideological system.
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Whatever the reasons may be, I was very much affected by events of the 1930s - the Spanish Civil War, for example, though I was barely literate.
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It's not a free trade agreement. It has virtually nothing to do with free trade... It's a protectionist agreement it's anti free-trade.
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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.
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The crimes against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and elsewhere, particularly Lebanon, are so shocking that the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a call for extreme actions. But that does not help the victims. And, in fact, it's likely to harm them.
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Suppose that the US really is trying to get rid of drugs in Colombia. Does Colombia then have the right to fumigate tobacco farms in Kentucky? They are producing a lethal substance far more dangerous than cocaine. More Colombians die from tobacco-related illnesses than Americans die from cocaine. Of course, Colombia has no right to do that.
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You cannot control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption.
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Civil disobedience's main goal typically is to try to arouse and inspire others to join and do something. Well, sometimes that is a good tactic, sometimes not.
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Don't be obsessed with tactics but with purpose. Tactics have a half life.
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Intellectuals (in the standard sense of the term, not [ Edward] Said's prescriptive sense) are the people who write history.
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Individuals in a university - students, faculty, staff - can choose to become politically engaged, and a free university should foster a climate in which those are natural choices.
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I am not too happy with terms like “the left”, to be honest. And I don’t use it much….if by “the left” you mean people who are committed to peace and justice and freedom and so on, there can’t be elements of the left opposed to workers’ movement, at least under that definition.
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The dangers of unexamined and unregulated monopoly power, particularly in the state executive, are hardly news. The right reaction is not passive acquiescence.
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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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There are massive efforts on the part of the internet's corporate owners to try to direct it to become a technique of marginalisation and control.
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There's a very committed effort to convert the US into something resembling a Third World society, where a few people have enormous wealth and a lot of others have no security.
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Fed and electoral college could use some tinkering, but they are not the source of the problems.
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The structure of language determines not only thought, but reality itself.
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I've often been struck by the extensive knowledge that people have of sports, and particularly, their self-confidence in discussing it with experts. . . . In contrast, when discussing matters of concern to human lives - their own and others - people tend to defer to experts.
Noam Chomsky