"In my experience at least, the large public universities do not fall behind in fostering creativity and independence; often the contrary."
Read quote
3 likes
Quote collection
Noam Chomsky quotes (page 79 of 84)
1.7K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"In the sciences particularly the large public universities must and do take an active role in fostering creativity and independence; otherwise the fields will wither, and along with them even the aspirations of wealth and power."
Read quote
3 likes
"As elite attitudes towards public education over time illustrate, simple formulas are far from adequate. There are conflicting tendencies."
Read quote
3 likes
"The attack on Social Security is similarly motivated. Social Security is based on the conception is that we should have sympathy for others, not function merely as isolated "rational wealth maximizers.""
Read quote
3 likes
"I pretend no originality in observing that mass education was motivated in part by the perceived need to "educate them to keep them from our throats," to borrow Ralph Waldo Emerson's parody of elite fears that inspired early advocates of public mass education."
Read quote
3 likes
"This is a large part of the academic profession: to make up complex, subtle arguments that are childishly ridiculous but are enveloped in sufficient profundity that they take on a kind of plausibility."
Read quote
3 likes
"Adam Smith is an egalitarian, he believed in equality of outcome, not opportunity. He is an enlightenment figure, pre-capitalist. He says, suppose in England, one landowner got most of the land and other people would have nothing to live on. He says it wouldn't matter much, because the rich land owner, by virtue of his sympathy for other people would distribute resources among them, so that by an invisible hand, we would end up with a pretty egalitarian society. That is his conception of human nature."
Read quote
3 likes
"Let's take Adam Smith, the patron-saint of capitalism, what did he think? He thought the main human instinct was sympathy. In fact, take a look at the word "invisible hand." Which, of course, you learned about, or you think you've learned about. Take a look at the actual way in which he used the phrase. There is almost no relation to what is claimed."
Read quote
3 likes
"Capitalism would self-destruct in no time. So the business classes have always demanded strong, straight intervention to protect the society from the destructive effects of market forces because they don't want everything destroyed."
Read quote
3 likes
"The major organizing centers, like the labor movement, have been severely weakened in the United States by policy."
Read quote
3 likes
"The Left, in a general sense, is very much atomized. We live in highly atomized societies. People are pretty much alone; it's you and your iPad."
Read quote
3 likes
"The leading, the most respected Vietnam historian, military historian Bernard Fall -he was a hawk incidentally, but he cared for the Vietnamese - he said it wasn't clear to him whether Vietnam could survive as a historical and cultural entity under the most massive attack that any region that size had ever suffered. He was talking about South Vietnam, incidentally."
Read quote
3 likes
"If you look back to the anti-intervention movements, what were they? Let's take the Vietnam War - the biggest crime since the Second World War. You couldn't be opposed to the war for years. The mainstream liberal intellectuals were enthusiastically in support of the war. In Boston, a liberal city where I was, we literally couldn't have a public demonstration without it being violently broken up, with the liberal press applauding, until late 1966."
Read quote
3 likes
"That's a large part of the source of the gun culture. You have to have a gun when you go into Starbucks, because who knows what's going to happen. It just doesn't happen in other countries."
Read quote
3 likes
"On the other hand, you have to balance that against expanding our nuclear forces, add to our so-called depleted military, which is already more powerful than the rest of the world combined; attack in Syria, send forces to Syria, start bombing. Who knows what could be next?"
Read quote
3 likes
"[Donald] Trump has been very inconsistent on many things; on Twitter he's been all over the place, but some of it is very consistent. That is: Do nothing about climate change except make it worse. And he's not just speaking for himself, but for the whole Republican Party, the whole leadership. It's already had impact, it will have worse impact."
Read quote
3 likes
"Democracy has both expanded and declined over the years."
Read quote
3 likes
"While the state can coerce, with some exceptions (like North Korea) it seems to me misleading to think of it as capable of "enslavement.""
Read quote
3 likes
"In general I don't think the image of the state as a divinity is very helpful."
Read quote
3 likes
"There certainly are those who worship the state much as divinities are worshipped. Not just the state but even leaders."
Read quote
3 likes