"The United States happens to be the only state in the world that has been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism."
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Noam Chomsky quotes (page 5 of 84)
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"Technology is basically neutral. It's kind of like a hammer. The hammer doesn't care whether you use it to build a house, or whether a torturer uses it to crush somebody's skull."
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"Globalization is the result of powerful governments, especially that of the United States, pushing trade deals and other accords down the throats of the world’s people to make it easier for corporations and the wealthy to dominate the economies of nations around the world without having obligations to the peoples of those nations."
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"I don't bother writing about Fox News. It is too easy. What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, the ones who portray themselves and perceive themselves as challenging power, as courageous, as standing up for truth and justice. They are basically the guardians of the faith. They set the limits. They tell us how far we can go. They say, 'Look how courageous I am.' But do not go one millimeter beyond that. At least for the educated sectors, they are the most dangerous in supporting power."
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"The United States is absolutely the most dangerous country in the world."
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"If you want to make changes in the world, you're going to have to be there day after day doing the boring, straightforward work of getting a couple of people interested and building a slightly bigger organization and carrying out the next move and suffering frustration and finally getting somewhere. That's how the world changes."
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"I mean, it’s true, nobody talks about them, but when you bring it up, the idea that you have to rent yourself to somebody and follow their orders, and that they own and you work there, and you built it but you don’t own it, that’s a highly unnatural notion. You don’t have to study any complicated theories to see that this is an attack on human dignity."
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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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"One might ask why tobacco is legal and marijuana not. A possible answer is suggested by the nature of the crop. Marijuana can be grown almost anywhere, with little difficulty. It might not be easily marketable by major corporations. Tobacco is quite another story."
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"In our society, real power does not happen to lie in the political system, it lies in the private economy: that’s where the decisions are made about what’s produced, how much is produced, what’s consumed, where investment takes place, who has jobs, who controls the resources, and so on and so forth. And as long as that remains the case, changes inside the political system can make some difference-I don’t want to say it’s zero-but the differences are going to be very slight."
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"If there had been a charismatic figure in the United States who could mobilize fears, anger, racism, a sense of loss of the future that belongs to us, this country could be in real danger. We're lucky that there never has been an honest, charismatic figure. McCarthy was too much of a thug, you know? Nixon was too crooked. Trump, I think, is too much of a clown. So, we've been lucky."
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"Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism."
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"The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful."
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"The people who were honored in the Bible were the false prophets. It was the ones we call the prophets who were jailed and driven into the desert."
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"Because they don't teach the truth about the world, schools have to rely on beating students over the head with propaganda about democracy. If schools were, in reality, democratic, there would be no need to bombard students with platitudes about democracy. They would simply act and behave democratically, and we know this does not happen. The more there is a need to talk about the ideals of democracy, the less democratic the system usually is."
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"ISIS is a monstrosity. It didn't come from nowhere. It's one of the results of the U.S. hitting a very vulnerable society - Iraq - with a sledgehammer."
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"The entire socioeconomic system is based on production for profit and a growth imperative that cannot be sustained."
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"All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume."
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"It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else."
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"If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That's not going to happen if you care only about yourself."
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