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I think that we have basically nothing in the field of human behavior. Maybe that is just a condition of temporary ignorance. But it may be that we are simply not intellectually equipped to develop such a theory.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust.
Noam Chomsky
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There is Pakistan's relationship with Afghanistan which will also be a very tricky issue in the coming years. Then there is a large part of Pakistan which is being torn apart from American drone attacks. The country is being invaded constantly by a terrorist superpower. Again, this is not a small problem.
Noam Chomsky
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States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.
Noam Chomsky
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Andorrans deserve much better than the rule of superstitious hysterics and extreme authoritarians, who try to instill obedience to their Holy Texts and chosen Divinities - and we should not fail to see that the terms are appropriate, if anything too kind.
Noam Chomsky
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In Kosovo, the U.S. has chosen a course of action that escalates atrocities and violence. It is also a course of action that strikes a blow against the regime of international order, but which offers the weak at least some protection from predatory states.
Noam Chomsky
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The market is regarded as democratic because everybody has a vote. Of course, some have more votes than others because your votes depend on the number of dollars you have, but everybody participates and therefore it's called democratic.
Noam Chomsky
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You know, we have little bits of understanding, glimpses, a little bit of light here and there, but there's a tremendous amount of darkness, which is a challenge. I think life would be pretty boring if we understood everything. It's better if we don't understand anything and know that we don't, that's the important part.
Noam Chomsky
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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
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The responsibility of the writer as a moral agent is to try to bring the truth about matters of human significance to an audience that can do something about them.
Noam Chomsky
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[Isaiah] Berlin's observation is accurate enough, and applies at home as well, and even more harshly for the reasons already mentioned: the apparatchiks and commissars could at least plead fear in extenuation.
Noam Chomsky
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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.
Noam Chomsky
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It is ... necessary to whip up the population in support of foreign adventures. Usually the population is pacifist, just like they were during the First World War. The public sees no reason to get involved in foreign adventures, killing, and torture. So you have to whip them up. And to whip them up you have to frighten them.
Noam Chomsky
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The Republican Party among the public is a minority party.
Noam Chomsky
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You can't get votes that way. So [the Republicans] have been compelled to mobilize a base of voters and gone to elements of the country that have always been there but were kind of marginal to the political system, for example, religious extremists.
Noam Chomsky
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I don't see any possibility of Britain and the U.S. allowing a sovereign independent Iraq that's almost inconceivable.
Noam Chomsky
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If you are not offending people who ought to be offended, you're doing something wrong.
Noam Chomsky
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It is now well-known that the Taliban's creation was facilitated by the CIA and the ISI as part of the 1980s anti-Soviet war.
Noam Chomsky
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For example, when my father was able to buy a secondhand car in the late 1930s, and he took us to the countryside for a weekend, if we looked for a motel to stay in we had to see if it said restricted on it. Restricted meant no Jews.
Noam Chomsky
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There are huge areas where the human mind is apparently incapable of forming sciences, or at least has not done so. There are other areas - so far, in fact, one area only [physics] - in which we have demonstrated the capacity for true scientific progress.
Noam Chomsky
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The Washington leadership has put aside non-proliferation programmes and devoted its energies and resources to driving the country to war by extraordinary deceit, then trying to manage the catastrophe it created in Iraq.
Noam Chomsky