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The United States is a very insular society. Most people know very little about the outside world and don't care that much. They're concerned with their own affairs.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 95
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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What is credibility? It's a very familiar notion. It's basically the notion that is central to the Mafia. So suppose say the Godfather produces some kind of edict and says you're going to have to pay protection money.
Noam Chomsky
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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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It's a lesser-known story, but the Japanese government (after the Russian-Nazi pact, which split Poland) did allow Polish Jews to come to Japan, with the expectation that they would then be sent to the United States. But they weren't accepted, so they stayed in Japan.
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Suppose that insect wings developed primarily as thermoregulators and then were used for skimming and finally flying, evolving along the way. What would they be for? Or what is the skeleton for? For keeping one upright, protecting organs, storing calcium, making blood cells...?
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What's called Obamacare is an effort to mildly change this [health-care system], not change it as far as it should go or as much as the population wants it to go, but to make it a little better and a little more affordable.
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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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There's a very striking fact about the elections which you can't miss if you looked at the red-and-blue electoral map the next day: it's the same political landscape that you saw during the Civil War - nothing much has changed except the party names.
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Occupying armies have responsibilities, not rights. Their primary responsibility is to withdraw as quickly and expeditiously as possible, in a manner determined by the occupied population.
Noam Chomsky
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For thirty years, Isreal has been highjacking ships in international waters, killing people, taking hostages, bringing them to Israel, putting them in secret prisons, all with the help of the United States. That's serious piracy.
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. . . among all grammars meeting this condition (of adequacy), we select the simplest.
Noam Chomsky
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China has been there for 3,000 years, has contempt for the barbarians, is overcoming a century of domination, and simply moves on its own. It does not get intimidated when Uncle Sam shakes his fist. That's scary.
Noam Chomsky
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Parts of the United States are taking on a Third World look.
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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It is only natural to expect that guilds will tend to protect their turf and to resist challenge.
Noam Chomsky
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From the late 1940s, into and through the '50s, there developed a complex interaction between federal government, state and local government, real-estate interests, commercial interests and court decisions, which had the effect of undermining the mass transit system across the country.
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There's a tremendous amount of language loss. Most of the attention is given to indigenous languages, which makes sense, but some of the most dramatic language loss is in Europe.
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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There are two problems for our species' survival - nuclear war and environmental catastrophe - and we're hurtling towards them. Knowingly.
Noam Chomsky
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To live a life of honesty and integrity is a responsibility of every decent person.
Noam Chomsky
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Barron and Paul...rely on 'specialists' at the State and Defense Departments...Elsewhere in the media, similiar figures are bandied about, with equal credibility.
Noam Chomsky