Explore Quotes by Noam Chomsky

Barron and Paul...rely on 'specialists' at the State and Defense Departments...Elsewhere in the media, similiar figures are bandied about, with equal credibility.

The atrocities in Cambodia are a direct and understandable response to the violence of the imperial system.

'Reform' is a word you always aughta' watch out for. 'Reform' is a change that you're supposed to like. And watch it - As soon as you hear the word 'Reform', you should reach for your wallet and see who's lifting it.

Suppose that the US really is trying to get rid of drugs in Colombia. Does Colombia then have the right to fumigate tobacco farms in Kentucky? They are producing a lethal substance far more dangerous than cocaine. More Colombians die from tobacco-related illnesses than Americans die from cocaine. Of course, Colombia has no right to do that.

Our current prison state has the dual effect of getting rid of a superfluous population of basically unskilled workers (with a close race-class correlation), and also demonizing them... The drug war is basically for this - It has nothing to do with drugs, but it has plenty to do with criminalizing an unwanted population and scaring everybody else.

How do I define God? I don't.... People who find such conceptions important for themselves have every right to frame them as they like. Personally, I don't.

If you want to end terrorism stop participating in it.

You are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions.

The world is a very puzzling place. If you're not willing to be puzzled, you just become a replica of someone else's mind.

The anniversary of Hiroshima, should be a day of somber reflection, not only on the terrible events of that day in 1945, but also on what they revealed: that humans, in their dedicated quest to extend their capacities for destruction, had finally found a way to approach the ultimate limit.

Latin America, for the first time in 500 years, is moving towards a degree of independence.

A basic principle of modern state capitalism is that costs and risks are socialized to the extent possible, while profit is privatized.

In the moral calculus of currently prevailing state capitalism, profits and bonuses in the next quarter greatly outweigh concern for the welfare of one’s grandchildren, and since these are institutional maladies, they will not be easy to overcome. While much remains uncertain, we can assure ourselves, with fair confidence, that future generations will not forgive us our silence and apathy.

It hardly takes more than a day in Gaza to begin to appreciate what it must be like to try to survive in the world’s largest open-air prison.

The one state/two state debate is irrelevant as Israel and the US consolidate Greater Israel.

We're supposed to worship Adam Smith but you're not supposed to read him. That's too dangerous.

In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid. The South African Nationalists needed the black population. That was their workforce. The Israeli relationship to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is totally different. They just don’t want them.

You keep plugging away--that's the way social change takes place. That's the way every social change in history has taken place: by a lot of people, who nobody ever heard of, doing work.

My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state... It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.

Whoever sets the agenda controls the outcome of the debate

He who controls the media controls the minds of the public.