Noam Chomsky Quotes About Values

• 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.

  Noam Chomsky

  Atrocities, Violence, Easy

• The point of public relations slogans like "Support Our Troops" is that they don't mean anything ... that's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody is going to be against and I suppose everybody will be for, because nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. But its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something, do you support our policy? And that's the one you're not allowed to talk about.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Mean, Media

  WBAI Radio Interview, January 1992.

• Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid-twentieth century.

  Noam Chomsky

  Technology, Practice, Political

  Noam Chomsky (2010). “The Chomsky Reader”, p.153, Pantheon

• The Bush Administration do have moral values. Their moral values are very explicit: shine the boots of the rich and the powerful, kick everybody else in the face, and let your grandchildren pay for it. That simple principle predicts almost everything that's happening.

  Noam Chomsky

  Powerful, Simple, Grandchildren

  Interview by Steve Scher on KUOW-FM 94.9, 2004.

• Peace is preferable to war. But it’s not an absolute value, and so we always ask, “What kind of peace?

  Noam Chomsky

  Peace, War, Kind

  Noam Chomsky (2004). “Middle East Illusions: Including Peace in the Middle East? : Reflections on Justice and Nationhood”, p.199, Rowman & Littlefield

• The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values.

  Noam Chomsky

  Philosophical, Issues, Experts

  Noam Chomsky (2010). “The Chomsky Reader”, p.71, Pantheon

• Selfish-gene theory tells us nothing about the value of interacting through language.

  Noam Chomsky

  Selfish, Language, Genes

  Source: libcom.org

• The US is a business-run huckster society, and its primary value is deceit.

  Noam Chomsky

  Running, Deceit, Primaries

• The question in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided . . . democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured; they may well be essential to survival.

  Noam Chomsky

  Survival, Democracy, Essentials

  "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media". Documentary, 1992.

• To summarize, draft resistance can make use of the inegalitarian nature of American society as a technique for increasing the cost of American aggression, and it threatens values that are important to those in a decision-making position.

  Noam Chomsky

  Decision, Important, Technique

  Institute Professor Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky (2010). “American Power and the New Mandarins”, p.493, ReadHowYouWant.com

• There's very little dislike of Americans in the world, shown by repeated polls, and the dissatisfaction - that is, the hatred and the anger - they come from acceptance of American values, not a rejection of them, and recognition that they're rejected by the U.S. government and by U.S. elites, which does lead to hatred and anger.

  Noam Chomsky

  Acceptance, Government, Rejection

• Given their unusual privilege, Western intellectuals can realistically accomplish a great deal. The limits are imposed by will more than objective circumstances. And about human will predictions are without value.

  Noam Chomsky

  Limits, Privilege, Unusual

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

• Everything depends very much on who you are, what your values are, what your commitments are, what circumstances you live in and what options you're willing to undertake, and that determines what you ought to be doing.

  Noam Chomsky

  Commitment, Circumstances, Determine

  Source: www.iww.org

• They [unions] used straight Marxist rhetoric [in 1930s] - just the values were changed.

  Noam Chomsky

  Unions, Used, Marxist

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