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The basic principle is that the losers have to confess, not the victors. When they do it, it's a crime. When we do it, it's not. And more generally, it's the defeated who are tried, not the victors.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
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East Oak Lane
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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The very idea that there should be a certain class of people who give orders by virtue of their ownership of wealth and another huge class who take on orders and follow them because of their lack of access to wealth and power, that's unacceptable. So, sure it should be abolished.
Noam Chomsky
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Western intellectuals, and also Third World intellectuals, were attracted to the Bolshevik counter-revolution because Leninism is, after all, a doctrine which says that the radical intelligentsia have a right to take state power and to run their countries by force, and that is an idea which is rather appealing to intellectuals.
Noam Chomsky
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Take Germany and Japan, both defeated in the Second World War. Germany has acknowledged its monstrous crimes to a certain extent, has paid reparations and so on. Japan, in contrast, apologizes for nothing and has paid no reparations, with one exception: It pays reparations to the United States, but not to Asia.
Noam Chomsky
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The desire for hope and change is easily understandable. In many ways it's even more dramatic in Europe.
Noam Chomsky
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In the major state capitalists economies, Europe and the US, it's low growth and stagnation and a very sharp income differentiation a shift - a striking shift - from production to financialization.
Noam Chomsky
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The syntactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretationand a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation.
Noam Chomsky
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I don't think all thinking is a kind of rational structure. But I don't think it is correct to identify the rational-nonrational dichotomy with the linguistic-nonlinguistic dichotomy.
Noam Chomsky
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The neoliberal programs of the last generation have in fact been, and were intended to be, a pretty serious attack on democracy, but also they've led to stagnation or decline for large parts of the population - the working class, the lower middle class, these people have essentially been cast aside.
Noam Chomsky
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Another problem is the confrontation with India. Pakistan just cannot survive if it continues to do so (continue this confrontation).
Noam Chomsky
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Ever since I've had any political awareness, I've felt either alone or part of a tiny minority.
Noam Chomsky
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Some kind of settlement in Kashmir is crucial for both India and Pakistan. It's also tearing India apart with horrible atrocities in the region which is controlled by Indian armed forces. This is feeding right back into society even in the domain of elementary civil rights.
Noam Chomsky
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Okay, NATO expanded to East Berlin and East Germany. Under [Bill] Clinton NATO expanded further, to the former Russian satellites. In 2008 NATO formally made an offer to Ukraine to join NATO. That's unbelievable. I mean, Ukraine is the geopolitical heartland of Russian concern, quite aside from historical connections, population and so on.
Noam Chomsky
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Remember, the U.S. is a powerful state, it's not like Libya. If Libya wants to carry out terrorist acts, they hire Carlos the Jackal or something. The United States hires terrorist states.
Noam Chomsky
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John Lewis Gaddis is not only the favorite historian of the Reagan administration, but he's regarded as the dean of Cold War scholarship, the leading figure in the American Cold War scholarship, a professor at Yale.
Noam Chomsky
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Every time there has been an effort by the Haitian people to overcome the misery and poverty that comes from 200 years of bitter attacks, really bitter, the U.S. steps in and blocks it.
Noam Chomsky
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With regard to freedom of expression there are basically two positions: you defend it vigorously for views you hate, or you reject it in favor of Stalinist/Fascist standards.
Noam Chomsky
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[Moral responsibilities] has nothing particular to do with academia, except insofar as those within it tend to be unusually privileged in the respects just mentioned.
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.
Noam Chomsky
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My memory - faded, as I say - is that Paul Johnson was trying to vilify all intellectuals who were at all critical of the states he worships, and of power generally (except, of course, the power of enemies, which we must denounce, imitating the commissars who are his models, though he doesn't understand it).
Noam Chomsky
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Putting it in plain terms, the general public must be reduced to its traditional apathy and obedience, and driven from the arena of political debate and action, if democracy is to survive.
Noam Chomsky