QuoteProject
Sports plays a societal role in engendering jingoist and chauvinist attitudes. They're designed to organize a community to be committed to their gladiators.
Noam Chomsky
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Sports can foster national pride and biased loyalties among fans.

Noam Chomsky's quote highlights how sports can play a significant role in shaping societal attitudes, often leading to jingoism and chauvinism. By rallying communities around their athletes, sports can create an intense, sometimes exclusionary allegiance that glorifies 'gladiators' representing a nation or group, which may lead to a distorted perception of competition and rivalries in society.

Themes

SportsSocietyJingoismChauvinismCommunitiesNationalism

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about the impact of sports on community identity, this quote could illustrate how local teams foster a sense of loyalty.

More from Noam Chomsky

There is no plausible theory under which the record of the Pentagon Papers can be interpreted as relating to the national defense.
Noam ChomskyRead
The 'free-floating intellectual' may occupy himself with problems because of their inherent interest and importance, perhaps to little effect.
Noam ChomskyRead
If you're teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.
Noam ChomskyRead
There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster;' instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.
Noam ChomskyRead
The Republican Party has become overwhelmingly so extreme that it's hardly a traditional political party anymore.
Noam ChomskyRead
There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information - the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.
Noam ChomskyRead

Similar quotes

Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals.
Napoleon BonaparteRead
My father always taught me that when you help other people, then God will give you double. And that's what has really happened to me. When I have helped other people who are in need, God has helped me more.
Cristiano RonaldoRead
There would be no one there to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistance with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
Kate ChopinRead
By opening our lives to God in Christ, we become new creatures. This experience, which Jesus spoke of as the new birth, is essential if we are to be transformed nonconformists . . . Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Read
Form as a goal always ends in formalism. For this striving is directed not towards an inside, but towards an outside. But only a living inside has a living outside.
Ludwig Mies Van Der RoheRead
Souls who can recognize God in the most trivial, the most grievous and the most mortifying things that happen to them in their lives, honor everything equally with delight and rejoicing, and welcome with open arms what others dread and avoid.
Jean-Pierre De CaussadeRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.