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Noam Chomsky Quotes - Page 21

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There are two problems for our species' survival - nuclear war and environmental catastrophe - and we're hurtling towards them. Knowingly.

There are two problems for our species' survival - nuclear war and environmental catastrophe - and we're hurtling towards them. Knowingly.

War, Two, Survival

"The NS Interview: Noam Chomsky". Interview with Alyssa Mcdonald, www.newstatesman.com. September 13, 2010.

Take a look at the current debates in Washington, and of course, everything in the media. Only one issue is discussed: the deficit - the least significant issue, but the most significant issue for the banks. The big problem, joblessness, is barely discussed, even though that's what the public wants, as polls clearly show. That's even what the business press supports, but the financial institutions are so powerful that the only issue is the deficit, and this runs right through the intellectual culture.

Running, Powerful, Support

Source: www.truth-out.org

French intellectual life has, in my opinion, been turned into something cheap and meretricious by the 'star' system. It is like Hollywood. Thus we go from one absurdity to another - Stalinism, existentialism. Lacan, Derrida - some of them obscene ( Stalinism), some simply infantile and ridiculous ( Lacan, Derrida). What is striking, however, is the pomposity and self-importance, at each stage.

Stars, Self, Intellectual

Noam Chomsky, Jean Bricmont, Julie Franck (2010). “Chomsky Notebook”, p.72, Columbia University Press

Hamas is regularly described as 'Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.' One will be hard put to find something like 'democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus'—blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.

Party, Israel, Years

U.S. domestic drug policy does not carry out its stated goals, and policymakers are well aware of that. If it isn't about reducing substance abuse, what is it about? It is reasonably clear, both from current actions and the historical record, that substances tend to be criminalized when they are associated with the so-called dangerous classes, that the criminalization of certain substances is a technique of social control.

Class, Goal, Historical

"On the War on Drugs". Week Online interview, chomsky.info. February 8, 2002.

Where are the drug cartels getting their weapons? They are being provided by the United States. Cut off that flow of arms.

Cutting, Drug Cartels, United States

"Noam Chomsky: Drug Cartels and the Growing Border War". Interview with Luis Fernando Cárdenas, chomsky.info. August 15, 2011.

England shouldn't have the real freedom of vote and we shouldn't either. Because as [James Madison] put it, one of the primary goals of government was to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority, to make sure the opulent maintain their rights. The constitutional system was structured to ensure that outcome.

Real, Rights, Government

Source: chomsky.info

A lot of countries break (or go against) the international law.

Country, Law, Break

Source: thehumanist.com

In fact, when drugs are legalized, use sometimes goes down, it's been claimed. Part of the reason is that teenage kids use illicit drugs because they are illicit. They are thumbing their noses at society. If they were legal, they might not.

Teenage, Kids, Drug

"Noam Chomsky: Drug Cartels and the Growing Border War". Interview with Luis Fernando Cárdenas, chomsky.info. August 15, 2011.

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.

Nature, Powerful, Principles

Anarcho-syndic alism took for granted that working people ought to control their own work, its conditions, the enterprises in which they work, along with communities, so they should be associated with one another in free associations, and democracy of that kind should be the foundational elements of a more general free society.

People, Community, Democracy

The Internet is an élite organization; most of the population of the world has never even made a phone call.

Phones, Organization, Population

Quoted in Observer, 18 Feb. 1996

Modern science and technology can relieve men of the necessity for specialized, imbecile labor. They may, in principle, provide the basis for a rational social order based on free association and democratic control, if we have the will to create it.

Technology, Men, Order

Noam Chomsky (2003). “For Reasons Of State”, p.404, Penguin Books India

Naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk... It's as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes 'Jew' and 'Gypsy.'

Weapons, Gypsy, Fighter

"Noam Chomsky: My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death". www.guernicamag.com. May 6, 2011.

One of the questions asked in that study was, How many Vietnamese casualties would you estimate that there were during the Vietnam war? The average response on the part of Americans today is about 100,000. The official figure is about two million. The actual figure is probably three to four million. The people who conducted the study raised an appropriate question: What would we think about German political culture if, when you asked people today how many Jews died in the Holocaust, they estimated about 300,000? What would that tell us about German political culture?

War, Thinking, Average

"Media Control". Book by Noam Chomsky, 1991.

I don't feel that there is anything deep in the political culture that prevents "educating the masses." I'm old enough to recall vividly the high level of culture, general and political, among first-generation working people during the Great Depression. Workers' education was lively and effective, union-based - mostly the vigorous rising labor movement, reviving from the ashes of the 1920s. I've often seen independent and impressive initiatives in working-class and poor and deprived communities today.

Independent, People, Community

Source: www.truth-out.org

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Sleep, Ideas, Psychology

Syntactic Structures ch. 2 (1957)

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.

People, Desert, Driven

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

Enormous and growing parts of the population are basically superfluous for profit-making purposes. Along with this, the jail population is increasing very rapidly; it's the highest in the industrial world by far. New and onerous crime bills are being passed to deal with this superfluous population.

Jail, Population, Purpose

After the first International Days of Protest in October, 1965, Senator Mansfield criticized the 'sense of utter irresponsibility' shown by the demonstrators.

Firsts, October, Protest

Institute Professor Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky (2010). “American Power and the New Mandarins”, p.466, ReadHowYouWant.com

We had one or another form of state capitalism during an extremely brief period of human history, which tells us essentially nothing about human nature. If you look at human societies and human interactions, you can find anything. You find selfishness, you find altruism, you find sympathy.

Selfishness, Looks, Human Nature

Source: pennpoliticalreview.org

Well before September 11, it was understood that with modern technology, the rich and powerful will lose their near monopoly of the means of violence and can expect to suffer atrocities on home soil.

Powerful, Home, Mean

"Drain the swamp and there will be no more mosquitoes" by Noam Chomsky, www.theguardian.com. September 8, 2002.

It [the internet] should be publicly controlled but Washington is not a system of public control, it's mainly a system of corporate control. We ought to have a free internet, but that means having a free society, and there is fundamental questions there.

Mean, Fundamentals, Internet

"Noam Chomsky interview". Interview with Jegan Vincent de Pau, chomsky.info. August 15, 2012.

When people denounced [former Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad for rejecting and criminalizing homosexuality, it should be remembered that was true of the United States until very recently. Women's rights were unheard of. Civil rights proponents were horribly treated, not just in the South. It was awful there, but pretty bad here. Environmental issues did not exist. Opposition to aggression was virtually zero. In fact, so little, that to this day, even scholarship mentions the Vietnam War as beginning in 1965.

Zero, War, Rights

Source: www.truth-out.org

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