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The educational system is pretty much geared to passing the next exam. You're educated to pass tests and not to understand.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 96
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
Chomsky
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More quotes by Noam Chomsky

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In many respects, the United States is the freest country in the world. I don't just mean in terms of limits on state coercion, though that's true too, but also in terms of individual relations. The United States comes closer to classlessness in terms of interpersonal relations than virtually any society.
Noam Chomsky
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All public resources go to the rich. The poor, if they can survive in the labor market, fine. Otherwise, they die. That's economics in a nutshell.
Noam Chomsky
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I think we can be reasonably confident that if the American population had the slightest idea of what is being done in their name, they would be utterly appalled.
Noam Chomsky
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One of the dangers [that Donald Trump poses, due to the augmented risk of nuclear war] is unquestionable. Of the two existential threats - the threats to the termination of the species basically and most other species - one of them, climate change, on that I think there's no basis for discussion.
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
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Stock ownership in the US is very highly concentrated. [Shareholder actions are] something, but it's like the old Communist Party in the USSR, it would be nice to see more protest inside the Communist Party but it's not democracy. It's not going to happen. [Shareholder actions] are a good step, but they're mostly symbolic.
Noam Chomsky
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The Democrats have pretty much given up on the white working class. That would require a commitment to economic issues and that's not their concern.
Noam Chomsky
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Bear in mind that we [ with Edward Herman] did not devise the terms manufacture of consent and engineering of consent. We borrowed them from leading figures in the media, public relations industry, and academic scholarship.
Noam Chomsky
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the Federal Reserve, has an official commitment to two different policies. One is to prevent inflation from getting too high. The second is to maintain high employment... The European central bank has only the first. It has no commitment to keep employment up.
Noam Chomsky
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It makes sense for societies to make education compulsory for children. Children are vulnerable. They can't make decisions. But the decisions can't all be left in the hands of the parents. They can be irresponsible too.
Noam Chomsky
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English is a second language in most of the educated sectors of Europe and much of the world. But maybe in the future Chinese will be. But I doubt that national languages will disappear. In fact, to some extent they're becoming more diverse, like in Europe.
Noam Chomsky
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For the totalitarian mind, adherence to state propaganda does not suffice: one must display proper enthusiasm while marching in the parade.
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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Markets are lethal, if only because of ignoring externalities, the impacts of their transactions on the environment.
Noam Chomsky
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Sectors of power are not going to favor the flourishing of dissidence.
Noam Chomsky
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Technology can also be used so that private individuals will have access to the way centralized decisions are being made.
Noam Chomsky
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In the case of Yugoslavia v. NATO, one of the charges was genocide. The U.S. appealed to the court, saying that, by law, the United States is immune to the charge of genocide, self-immunized, and the court accepted that, so the case proceeded against the other NATO powers but not against the United States.
Noam Chomsky
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The House of Representatives, which was closer to the population, had much less power. The executive was more or less an administrator, not an emperor like today.
Noam Chomsky
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Should people be mere interested spectators of action, not participants, restricted to lending their weight periodically to one or another sector of the responsible men, as advocates of manufacture of consent have recommended? Or should their rights transcend these highly restricted bounds?
Noam Chomsky
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Anarchists try to identify power structures. They urge those exercising power to justify themselves. This justification does not succeed most of the time.
Noam Chomsky