“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”
—Noam Chomsky
“The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on — because they're dysfunctional to the institutions.”
—Noam Chomsky
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
—Noam Chomsky
“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.”
― Noam Chomsky
“Education is a system of imposed ignorance.”
― Noam Chomsky
“It's not radical Islam that worries the US — it's independence”
― Noam Chomsky
“The more you can increase fear of drugs, crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all of the people.”
― Noam Chomsky
“Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.
In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future.”
― Noam Chomsky
“It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.”
― Noam Chomsky
“It's only terrorism if they do it to us. When we do much worse to them, it's not terrorism.”
― 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.”
― Noam Chomsky
“No honest journalist should be willing to describe himself or herseif as 'embedded.' To say, 'I'm an embedded journalist' is to say, 'I'm a government Propagandist.”
- Noam Chomsky
"We will always learn more about human life and human personality from novels than from scientific psychology".
—Noam Chomsky
"As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome."
—Noam Chomsky
"Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It's something you have to find out for yourself."
—Noam Chomsky
"He who controls the media controls the minds of the public."
—Noam Chomsky
"…jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you’re trying to organize a mass base of support for policies that are really intended to crush them."
—Noam Chomsky
"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."
—Noam Chomsky
"Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune."
—Noam Chomsky
"I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system."
—Noam Chomsky
"If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged."
—Noam Chomsky
"If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion."
—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."
—Noam Chomsky
"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."
—Noam Chomsky
"States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions."
—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."
—Noam Chomsky
“Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.”
― Noam Chomsky
"We shouldn’t be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas."
—Noam Chomsky
"NATO exists to deal with the problems created by its existence."
—Noam Chomsky
"Governments regard their own citizens as their main enemy."
—Noam Chomsky