Noam Chomsky Quotes - Page 15

• 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.

  Noam Chomsky

  Kentucky, Political, Drug

  Noam Chomsky (2004). “Language and Politics”, p.738, AK Press

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• By accident of geography, the world's major oil resources are in Shi'ite-dominated areas. Iran's oil is concentrated right near the gulf, which happens to be an Arab area, not Persian. Khuzestan is Arab, has been loyal to Iran, fought with Iran not Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. This is a potential source of dissension. I would be amazed if there isn't an attempt going on to stir up secessionist elements in Khuzestan.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Iran, Oil

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Technology is usually fairly neutral. It’s like a hammer, which can be used to build a house or to destroy someone’s home. The hammer doesn’t care. It is almost always up to us to determine whether the technology is good or bad.

  Noam Chomsky

  Home, Technology, House

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• Now, you ban not the whole Muslim world. You ban seven states, seven states that have not been responsible for a single terrorist act. Those are the seven [Donald Trump] banned. But, you leave the ones that really are responsible, like Saudi Arabia, which is the center for propaganda and funding and so on for radical Islamic Jihadism, well you can't touch them because of business interests, also they have oil and so on and so forth.

  Noam Chomsky

  Islamic, Oil, Arabia

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Remember that in any major nuclear war, the first strike destroys the country that attacks; it's been known for years. The first strike of a major power is very likely to cause what's called nuclear winter, leads to global famine for years and everything's basically gone. Some survivors straggling around. Could [Donald Trump] do it? Who knows.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, War, Winter

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• If the US were to attack North Korea, they'd certainly destroy North Korea, but South Korea would be pretty well wiped out too.

  Noam Chomsky

  Korea, Would Be, Wells

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• We naturally assume that our mental structures are universal. But I suppose an outside biologist looking at us would see something very different. He would see that, like other organisms, we have a narrow sphere within which we are very good, but that sphere is very limited. And that, in fact, the very achievements we can have within that sphere are related to lack of achievements in other spheres.

  Noam Chomsky

  Achievement, Different, Facts

  Source: chomsky.info

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• I think this country and the world would be far better off if the US is not an outlaw state.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, Thinking, World

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.

  Noam Chomsky

  Positive, Meaningful, Steps

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

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• There is a principle of human affairs that goes back millennia, which is that you don't look in the mirror. You can trace this principle back to the Bible. The designated intellectuals of that time are called prophets, which is a mistranslation of a Hebrew word, but they were basically intellectuals, giving geopolitical analysis, criticizing the moral practice of leadership, etc. Now, these people were not treated very nicely. There were other intellectuals who were treated nicely, namely those who centuries later came to be called false prophets. These were the flatterers of the court.

  Noam Chomsky

  Mirrors, Practice, People

  Source: www.madre.org

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• [Francisco] Franco's army was mainly Moorish. They were recruiting people from Morocco to come to Spain. There was an uprising in Morocco at the time led by Abd el-Krim (whose tactics influenced Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara) that sought independence for Morocco and Northern Africa.

  Noam Chomsky

  Army, Uprising, People

  Source: thehumanist.com

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• 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

  Nature, Believe, Hero

  Institute Professor Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky (2010). “American Power and the New Mandarins”, p.502, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• I mean you look back at American history and American culture, it's pretty striking. I mean this has been the safest country in the world forever, and the most frightened country in the world.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, Mean, Forever

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• In fact, what were called the socialist countries in Eastern Europe were the most anti-socialist systems in the world. Workers had more rights in the United States and England than they had in Russia, and it was somehow still called socialism.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, Russia, Rights

  Source: pennpoliticalreview.org

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• 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

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• America has always been the richest and most secure, and sometimes the most dangerous country in the world. In the early years, the danger was to everybody near us, slaves, Native Americans, Mexicans. It finally expanded in 1898 to the Caribbean, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, Native American, Years

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• Of course, we [ with Edward Herman] have a purpose: namely, to encourage readers to undertake what might be called "a course in intellectual self-defense," and to suggest ways to proceed; in other words, to help people undermine the dedicated efforts to "manufacture consent" and to turn them into passive objects rather than agents who control their own fate.

  Noam Chomsky

  Fate, Self, People

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• It's only terrorism if they do it to us. When we do much worse to them, it's not terrorism.

  Noam Chomsky

  Terrorism, Ifs

  Noam Chomsky (2011). “Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda”, p.93, Seven Stories Press

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• [Mikhail] Gorbachev complained. He was told look, there's nothing on paper. People didn't actually say it but the implication was look, if you are dumb enough to take faith in a gentleman's agreement with us, that's your problem. NATO expanded to East Germany.

  Noam Chomsky

  East Germany, Agreement, People

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• In fact, by universal grammar I mean just that system of principles and structures that are the prerequisites for acquisition of language, and to which every language necessarily conforms.

  Noam Chomsky

  Mean, Facts, Principles

  Source: chomsky.info

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• The Obama administration is dedicated to increasing terrorism. In fact, he is doing it all over the world. Obama is running the biggest terrorist operation that exists, maybe in history. The drone assassination campaigns - which are just part of the special forces operations and so on - all of these operations are terror operations.

  Noam Chomsky

  Running, Special, Administration

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• For example, when my father was able to buy a secondhand car in the late 1930s, and he took us to the countryside for a weekend, if we looked for a motel to stay in we had to see if it said "restricted" on it. "Restricted" meant no Jews.

  Noam Chomsky

  Father, Weekend, Car

  Source: thehumanist.com

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• Real popular culture is folk art - coalminers' songs and so forth.

  Noam Chomsky

  Song, Art, Real

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• In studying language we can discover many basic properties of this cognitive structure, its organization, and also the genetic predispositions that provide the foundation for its development. So in this respect, linguistics, first of all, tries to characterize a major feature of human cognitive organization. And second, I think it may provide a suggestive model for the study of other cognitive systems. And the collection of these systems is one aspect of human nature.

  Noam Chomsky

  Thinking, Organization, Trying

  Source: chomsky.info

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• Who wrote the Bible? Current scholarship, to my knowledge, assumes that the material that constitutes the Old Testament was put together from various oral and folk traditions (many of them going far back) in the Hellenistic period. That was one of several currents, of which the collection that formed the New Testament was another.

  Noam Chomsky

  Together, Assuming, Tradition

  Source: chomsky.info

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