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Every great power, every aggressive power has always regarded itself as exceptional and as doing things only for the most moral ends.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 95
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
Computer Scientist
Historian
Human Rights Activist
Linguist
Media Critic
Opinion Journalist
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Philosopher
East Oak Lane
Philadelphia
Avram Noam Chomsky
A. Noam Chomsky
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Moral
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Great
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The structure of language determines not only thought, but reality itself.
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I pretend no originality in observing that mass education was motivated in part by the perceived need to educate them to keep them from our throats, to borrow Ralph Waldo Emerson's parody of elite fears that inspired early advocates of public mass education.
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The term intellectual is used conventionally to refer to people who happen to have unusual opportunities in this regard, and as always, opportunity confers moral responsibility.
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The very properties of the human mind that provide an enormous scope for human genius in some domains will serve as barriers to progress in other domains, just as the properties that enable each child to acquire a complex and highly articulated human language block the acquisition of other imaginable linguistic systems.
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I do not see how we can rationally oppose high speed rail because of the environmental and other costs without considering the social and human consequences of the radical elimination of transportation that this entails.
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A large part of the left is pro-Assad. In those circles, you can't criticize Assad, but you know he's a monstrous war criminal. And anyone who criticizes Assad is joining the US imperialists. That's just ludicrous.
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Since the civil war in Laos was resumed in earnest in 1963, American participation has been veiled in secrecy.
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You have to love that government, but hate the government that might work in your interest and that you could control. That's an interesting propaganda task, but it's been carried out very well.
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I have never suggested any principled difference between the natural and social sciences.
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My grandchildren are on social media all the time, and they think they have friends. But it's not what I would've called a friend, ever.
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I mean, what's the elections? You know, two guys, same background, wealth, political influence, went to the same elite university, joined the same secret society where you're trained to be a ruler - they both can run because they're financed by the same corporate institutions.
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Right now, huge numbers of people cannot obtain even drinking water, and the situation is likely to become worse with predicted climate change and failure to take the actions that are necessary.
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Nothing can justify crimes such as those of September 11, but we can think of the United States as an innocent victim only if we adopt the convenient path of ignoring the record of its actions and those of its allies, which are, after all, hardly a secret.
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Take a look at the bombing of Serbia in 1999. The US was quite open about the reasons for the bombing. A main reason was to preserve stability and credibility. Serbia was interfering with stability, meaning that it was the one part of the Balkans that was not integrated into the Western-dominated (mostly US-dominated) system.
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It's perfectly obvious that there is some genetic factor that distinguishes humans from other animals and that it is language-specific. The theory of that genetic component, whatever it turns out to be, is what is called universal grammar.
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As long as individuals are compelled to rent themselves on the market to those who are willing to hire them, as long as their role in production is simply that of ancillary tools, then there are striking elements of coercion and oppression that make talk of democracy very limited, if even meaningful.
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We have never had class-based parties. We've had parties run by the business classes. There's slight variations. Like in the New Deal period, there was a lot of popular activism, so things shifted slightly, but not much.
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If you are working 50 hours a week in a factory, you don't have time to read 10 newspapers a day and go back to declassified government archives. But such people may have far-reaching insights into the way the world works.
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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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Democratic societies can't force people. Therefore they have to control what they think.
Noam Chomsky