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
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1.7K
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Noam Chomsky quotes (page 73 of 84)

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"If in fact, the US story is correct, if it is true that Syria used chemical weapons, then it wouldn't be a major crime to send a kind of shot across the bow saying you can't do this anymore. Not the best thing in the world, but not a major crime, either. So, I think at the very least there should have been an inquiry into what happened. But just joining the bandwagon about how we're finally standing up to crimes in Syria, that's ridiculous."

Thinking Should Have Stories
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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."

War Circles Criminals
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"A democracy barely functions under the neoliberal system."

Democracy Function
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"It's been a real success - one of the great business successes in the United States - to break down organization, to separate people too: it's part of consumerism. If you can drive people toward individual consumption, that's the highest goal in life. And furthermore, drive them into debt so they're trapped. You don't have to worry about a democracy function because people are trapped and they're alone."

Real Organization People
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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."

Educational Tests Next
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"What matters is the way we Americans think about ourselves. We think about ourselves as incapable of committing crimes. Everything we do, we make a lot of errors, you know, you can't help it. Mistakes all over the place, but out of naïveté or, you know, misplaced kindness or something like that."

Kindness Mistake Thinking
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"Capitalism is based on the principle that everything has to be privately owned; it can't be held in common. There is even a dogma, which is today called, the "tragedy of the commons" which holds that if things are held in common they are going to be destroyed. If they're privatized, like you give them to Bechtel or Monsanto or ExxonMobil, then they'll be preserved because that's the capitalist's religion."

Giving Tragedy Principles
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"Europe is being subjected to the kinds of programs that devastated Latin America for many years. Latin America has thrown them out and is pulling out: It's successful; it's democratizing; it's economically developing; and it's free from the shrapnel of US imperialism for 25 years. Meanwhile, Western Europe is destroying itself systematically, destroying itself going in the opposite direction."

Latin Successful America
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"Bolivia is in the lead internationally in talking about the threat of environmental catastrophe. It's generally true where there are indigenous populations, there are important things happening; where the indigenous populations have been marginalized or exterminated, things go to a disaster. This is true worldwide, and Bolivia is striking because it's a majority population and in the lead."

Talking Environmental Important
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"Very urgent measures need to be taken, and without much delay, in dealing with the ongoing destruction of the environment."

Taken Delay Needs
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"Part of the uprising of Latin America, particularly in the last 10 to 15 years, has been a reaction to [neoliberal regime], and they have thrown out a lot of these measures and moved in a different direction. In earlier years, the US would have overthrown the governments or, one way or another, curtailed them. Now, it can't do that."

Latin Years Uprising
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"The US and Canada are now increasingly isolated in the hemisphere, and sooner or later, I think we're going to find that the US and Canada are simply excluded from hemispheric affairs. That's a sharp reversal of what was the case not long ago."

Thinking Long Ago Hemisphere
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"There was a hemispheric conference in Colombia. It couldn't reach a consensus, so there was no declaration that came out, [but] on the crucial issues, Canada and the US were totally isolated. The rest of the hemisphere voted one way, and the US and Canada rejected it. So there couldn't be a consensus."

Issues Hemisphere Canada
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"The criminalization of Black life was something specific to the United States in the post-Reconstruction period and there's something like it happening today with mass incarceration, directed largely against black males."

Black Males United States
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"Resource extraction impacts a global environment that is increasingly at severe risk."

Impact Risk Environment
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"There clearly is a serious race problem in the country. Just take a look at what's happening to African American communities. For example wealth, wealth in African American communities is almost zero. The history is striking."

Country Zero Race
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"Markets also have a very bad psychological effect. They drive people to a conception of themselves and society in which you're only after your own good, not the good of others and that's extremely harmful."

People Psychological Effects
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"You also have to get beyond that to dismantle the system of production for profit rather than production for use. That means dismantling at least large parts of market systems."

Mean Use Profit
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"Worker ownership within a state capitalist, semi-market system is better than private ownership but it has inherent problems. Markets have well-known inherent inefficiencies. They're very destructive."

Problem Well Known Ownership
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"CEOs pretty much pick the boards that give them salaries and bonuses. That's one of the reasons why the CEO-to-payment [ratio] has so sharply escalated in this country in contrast to Europe. (They're similar societies and it's bad enough there, but here we're in the stratosphere. ] There's no particular reason for it."

Country Europe Giving
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