Noam Chomsky Quotes About Effort

• Efforts can succeed over time, and not trying ensures that the worst will happen.

  Noam Chomsky

  Effort, Trying, Succeed

• Anyone who studies declassified documents soon becomes aware that government secrecy is largely an effort to protect policy makers from scrutiny by citizens, not to protect the country from enemies.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, Government, Effort

• There are massive efforts on the part of the internet's corporate owners to try to direct it to become a technique of marginalisation and control.

  Noam Chomsky

  Effort, Trying, Technique

  "Peace netter". Interview with Hamish Mackintosh, www.theguardian.com. October 16, 2002.

• There are major efforts being made to dismantle Social Security, the public schools, the post office - anything that benefits the population has to be dismantled. Efforts against the U.S. Postal Service are particularly surreal.

  Noam Chomsky

  School, Office, Effort

• Look at the ozone story. As long as it was the southern hemisphere that was being threatened, there was very little talk about it. When it was discovered in the north, very quickly actions were taken to do something about it. Right now there's discussion of putting serious effort into developing a malaria vaccine, because global warming might extend malaria to the rich countries, so something should be done about it.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, Taken, Rich Countries

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Social and political issues in general seem to me fairly simple; the effort to obfuscate them in esoteric and generally vacuous theory is one of the contributions of the intelligentsia to enhancing their own power and the power of those they serve.

  Noam Chomsky

  Simple, Issues, Effort

  Noam Chomsky (2004). “Language and Politics”, p.345, AK Press

• People are capable of seeing the deceit they're ensnared in. They just have to make the effort.

  Noam Chomsky

  People, Effort, Deceit

• Our concern is to help people counter the efforts of those who seek to "regiment the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers," so that the self-designated "responsible men" will be able to run the affairs of the world untroubled by the "bewildered herd" - the general public - who are to be marginalized and dispersed, directed to personal concerns, in a well-regulated "democracy."

  Noam Chomsky

  Running, Army, Men

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

• Most of us who were opposed to the war, especially in the early '60's - the war we were opposed to was the war on South Vietnam which destroyed South Vietnam's rural society. The South was devastated. But now anyone who opposed this atrocity is regarded as having defended North Vietnam. And that's part of the effort to present the war as if it were a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam with the United States helping the South. Of course it's fabrication. But it's "official truth" now.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Effort, Atrocities

  Source: chomsky.info

• Anything that you are achieving that undermines and threatens systems of power will meet with oppression. Systems of power don't say 'thank you.' What's important is not to focus all your efforts on the oppression, but to continue the constructive work.

  Noam Chomsky

  Focus, Effort, Important

• Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on the society. It's also extremely dangerous with all the weapons development.

  Noam Chomsky

  Effort, Tolls, Development

  Source: www.dawn.com

• So if you look at the writings of intellectuals, there are two kinds. One said, l"Look, if we fought harder we could have won.But the others, who were way at the left, people like Anthony Lewis of the New York Times, way out in left stream, his view in 1975 was the Vietnam war began with blundering efforts to do good. But by 1969, it was clear that it was a disaster, that was too costly to us.

  Noam Chomsky

  New York, War, Writing

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• [Camillo] Berneri proposed that the anarchists should link up with the effort of Northern Africa to overthrow the Spanish government, carry out land reform, attract the base of the Moorish army, and see if they could undermine [Francisco] Franco's army through political warfare in Northern Africa combined with guerrilla warfare in Spain. Historians laughed at that, but I don't think they should have. This was the kind of war that might have succeeded in stopping Spanish fascism.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Army, Thinking

  Source: thehumanist.com

• I don't really think there have been transitional periods to socialism. There have been efforts, but they have usually been destroyed by a combination of external force and internal corruption.

  Noam Chomsky

  Thinking, Effort, Socialism

  Source: pennpoliticalreview.org

• What has to be done today is (1) large-scale conversion (weatherizing , etc.), (2) sharp change in transportation to greater efficiency, like high-speed rail, (3) serious efforts to move to sustainable energy, probably solar in the somewhat longer term, (4) other adjustments that are feasible. If done effectively, that might be enough to stave off disaster. If not, then we can give up the ghost, because there are no alternatives in this world, at least none that I've seen suggested.

  Noam Chomsky

  Giving Up, Moving, Effort

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Popular struggles to bring about a freer and more just society have been resisted by violence and repression, and massive efforts to control opinion and attitudes. Over time, however, they have met with considerable success, even though there is a long way to go, and there is often regression.

  Noam Chomsky

  Attitude, Struggle, Long

  Noam Chomsky (2016). “Who Rules the World?”, p.85, Metropolitan Books

• Major efforts have to be undertaken to bring the general public to understand the real reasons for their plight, and the possibilities for radical social and political change to construct meaningful popular control of all institutions - in communities, in the workplace, in the larger society, and on to the international order.

  Noam Chomsky

  Meaningful, Real, Order

  Source: www.brooklynrail.org

• There is a narrow class of uses of language where you intend to communicate. Communication refers to an effort to get people to understand what one means. And that, certainly, is one use of language and a social use of it. But I don't think it is the only social use of language. Nor are social uses the only uses of language.

  Noam Chomsky

  Communication, Mean, Thinking

  Source: chomsky.info

• What's called Obamacare is an effort to mildly change this [health-care system], not change it as far as it should go or as much as the population wants it to go, but to make it a little better and a little more affordable.

  Noam Chomsky

  Obamacare, Effort, Population

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• If a person chooses not to be a writer, or speaker, then (by definition) the person is choosing not to be engaged in an effort,"to bring the truth about matters of human significance to an audience that can do something about them," apart, perhaps, from some circle of immediate associates.

  Noam Chomsky

  Circles, Effort, Definitions

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

• One thing that you and I know is language. Another thing that you and I know is how objects behave in perceptual space. We have a whole mass of complex ways of understanding what is the nature of visual space. A proper part of psychology ought to be, and in recent years has been, an effort to try to discover the principles of how we organize visual space. I would say that the same is true of every domain of psychology, of human studies.

  Noam Chomsky

  Years, Space, Effort

  Source: chomsky.info

• There's an interesting book by the former Brazilian ambassador Celso Amorim. In 2010, he initiated an effort along with Turkey to settle the whole Iran issue. Nobody outside of the United States takes it to be much of an issue. They made a deal with Iran for Iran to essentially give away its low enriched uranium to Turkey for storage, and in return, the Western powers. It was immediately scratched by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And the main reason was they didn't want anybody else to be involved in it. We were supposed to run things, but we didn't say that.

  Noam Chomsky

  Running, Book, Giving

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• Every time there has been an effort by the Haitian people to overcome the misery and poverty that comes from 200 years of bitter attacks, really bitter, the U.S. steps in and blocks it.

  Noam Chomsky

  Block, Years, People

  "Noam Chomsky on Civil Rights, Obama, Latin America, and the History of the U.S. in the Middle East". "Democracy Now!" with Amy Goodman, www.democracynow.org. February 17, 2011.

• To go back to a moment of Western civilization remote enough in time so that we should be able to look at it dispassionately, ask what happened during World War I. What was the typical behavior of respected intellectuals in Germany, England, the United States? What happened to those who publicly questioned the nobility of the war effort, on both sides? I do not think the answers are untypical.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Thinking, Civilization

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

• Biblical archaeology was developed early in this century in an effort to substantiate the authenticity of the Biblical account. It's by now generally recognized in Biblical scholarship that it has done the opposite. The Bible is not a historical text, and has only vague resemblances to what took place, as far as can be reconstructed. For example, whether Israel ever existed is not clear; if so, it was probably a small kingdom somewhere in the hills, apparently virtually unknown to the Egyptians.

  Noam Chomsky

  Biblical, Israel, Opposites

  Source: chomsky.info

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