"If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
Read quote
110 likes
Quote collection
Noam Chomsky quotes (page 2 of 84)
1.7K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune."
Read quote
107 likes
"Hypocrites are those who apply to others the standards that they refuse to accept for themselves."
Read quote
107 likes
"The indoctrination is so deep that educated people think they’re being objective."
Read quote
106 likes
"Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It's something you have to find out for yourself."
Read quote
105 likes
"It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies."
Read quote
104 likes
"If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world."
Read quote
101 likes
"The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - 'indoctrination,' we might say - exercised through the mass media."
Read quote
95 likes
"If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged."
Read quote
94 likes
"Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech."
Read quote
92 likes
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."
Read quote
87 likes
"Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony."
Read quote
86 likes
"I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions... Don't take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can't. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself."
Read quote
73 likes
"The media want to maintain their intimate relation to state power. They want to get leaks, they want to get invited to the press conferences. They want to rub shoulders with the Secretary of State, all that kind of business. To do that, you've got to play the game, and playing the game means telling their lies, serving as their disinformation apparatus."
Read quote
70 likes
"What's the point of being better than someone else?"
Read quote
70 likes
"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."
Read quote
70 likes
"The leading student of business propaganda, Australian social scientist Alex Carey, argues persuasively that “the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."
Read quote
68 likes
"You are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions."
Read quote
67 likes
"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state..."
Read quote
67 likes
"I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system."
Read quote
67 likes