3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky 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.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky Humans have certain properties and characteristics which are intrinsic to them, just as every other organism does. That’s human nature.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky 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.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won’t be a world – at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky 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.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky There are two problems for our species’ survival – nuclear war and environmental catastrophe – and we’re hurtling towards them. Knowingly.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky Concentration of executive power, unless it’s very temporary and for specific circumstances, let’s say fighting world war two, it’s an assault on democracy.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn’t betray it I’d be ashamed of myself.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky The major advances in speed of communication and ability to interact took place more than a century ago. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph was far more radical than that from telephone to email!
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky The ‘anti-globalisation movement’ is the most significant proponent of globalisation – but in the interests of people, not concentrations of state-private power.
3 December 2020 Noam Chomsky The government of Israel doesn’t like the kinds of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world.
