Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky

Linguist, Philosopher, Activist

Noam Chomsky is a renowned linguist and political activist known for his critiques of media and power structures, particularly through his work 'Manufacturing Consent.'

People Thinking War Country Mean Government
Born
December 7, 1928
Quotes
1.7K
Rank
#238

Quote collection

Noam Chomsky quotes (page 31 of 84)

1.7K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"Actually, the phrase "national security" is barely used until the 1930s. And there's a reason. By then, the United States was beginning to become global. Before that the United States had been mostly a regional power - Britain was the biggest global power. After the Second World War, national security is everywhere, because we basically owned the world, so our security is threatened everywhere. Not just on our borders, but everywhere - so you have to have a thousand military bases around the world for "defense.""

Military War Borders
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"In the primary debates for the 2016 election, every single Republican candidate was a climate change denier, with one exception, John Kasich - the "rational moderate" - who said it may be happening but we shouldn't do anything about it. For a long time, the media have downplayed the issue."

Media Issues Long
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"In fact, it's doing it all over the world. Obama, first of all, is running the biggest terrorist operation that exists, maybe in history. The drone assassination campaigns, which are just part of it. All of these operations, they are terror operations."

Running Drones Campaigns
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"Groupings of people that get together, think things through, come out to plan and so on, like unions or true political organizations, they've disintegrated. And people tend to be atomized - you get down to a society based on social units based on an atom - an atomic element - which is a person and their computer. Not a society that is going to be able to function freely and democratically. The tendency is there; it doesn't have to be, but its something to worry about."

Thinking Organization People
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"At the beginning of his administration, Reagan tried set the basis for American military intervention in El Salvador - which is about what Kennedy did when he came into office in regard to Vietnam. Well, when Kennedy tried it in Vietnam, it just worked like a dream. Virtually nobody opposed American bombing of South Vietnam in 1962. It was not an issue. But when Reagan began to talk of involving American forces in El Salvador there was a huge popular uproar. And he had to choose a much more indirect way of supporting the collection of gangsters in power there. He had to back off."

Dream Military Issues
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"If the most important revolutionary part of the George W. Bush Doctrine is that states that harbor terrorists are terrorist states, what do we conclude from that? We conclude exactly what Kissinger was kind enough to say: These doctrines are unilateral. They are not intended as doctrines of international law or doctrines of international affairs. They are doctrines that grant the U.S. the right to use force and violence and to harbor terrorists, but not anyone else."

Law Important Violence
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"Maybe the science is uncertain, maybe we don't have to worry about it. Climate change is the worst, but there's others."

Worry Climate Uncertain
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"When I wrote about the Spanish Civil War many years later, I used documents that I picked up when I was a child, as a lot hadn't been published (a lot more resources are available now)."

Children War Years
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"Our minds are specifically adapted to developing certain theories, and we have a science if the theories that are available to our minds happen to be close to true. Well, there is no particular reason to suppose that the intersection of true theories and theories that are accessible to the mind is very large. It may not be very large."

Mind May Reason
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"Imagine an extrahuman observer looking at us. Such an extrahuman observer would be struck precisely by the uniformity of human languages, by the very slight variation from one language to another, and by the remarkable respects in which all languages are the same. And then he would notice we do not pay any attention to that because for the purpose of human life it is quite natural and appropriate just to take for granted everything that is common. We don't concern ourselves with that, all we worry about are differences."

Differences Worry Would Be
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"Of course, everybody says they're for peace. Hitler was for peace. Everybody is for peace. The question is: What kind of peace?"

Kind Courses
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"Some [people] may be "servants of the power structure," but that has to be shown. I think it often can be shown, but the burden of proof is on the critic who puts forth that thesis in particular cases."

Thinking Burden Of Proof Often Can
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"In the Munich agreement in late 1938 [Franklin] Roosevelt sent his chief adviser Sumner Welles, who came back with a very supportive statement saying that Hitler was someone we could really do business with and so on."

Agreement Supportive Munich
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"For a while, after the Second World War, when there was strong support for labor, this was done subtly."

Strong War Support
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"I think a very important aspect of language has to do with the establishment of social relations and interactions. Often, this is described as communication. But that is very misleading, I think."

Communication Thinking Important
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"A default of the US government would not only be very harmful here, it would probably send the country back into deep recession, but it just might crash the international financial system."

Country Government Might
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"As the capacity to coerce declines, it is natural to turn to control of opinion as the basis for authority and domination - a fundamental principle of government already emphasized by David Hume."

Government Principles Fundamentals
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"Poor whites didn't have rights. They made all kind of restrictions on voting. So person meant relatively well - off, free white man."

Men Rights White Man
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"If something comes along that you don't like, there are a few sort of four-letter words that you can use to push it out of the sphere of discussion. If you were in a bar downtown, they might have different words, but if you're an educated person what you use are complicated words like "conspiracy theory" or "Marxist." It's a way of pushing unpleasant questions off the agenda so that we can continue in our own happy ideology."

Downtown Agendas Four
Read quote 5 likes
Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Popular

"To go back to a moment of Western civilization remote enough in time so that we should be able to look at it dispassionately, ask what happened during World War I. What was the typical behavior of respected intellectuals in Germany, England, the United States? What happened to those who publicly questioned the nobility of the war effort, on both sides? I do not think the answers are untypical."

War Thinking Civilization
Read quote 5 likes