Noam Chomsky Quotes - Page 21

• Anarcho-syndic alism took for granted that working people ought to control their own work, its conditions, the enterprises in which they work, along with communities, so they should be associated with one another in free associations, and democracy of that kind should be the foundational elements of a more general free society.

  Noam Chomsky

  People, Community, Democracy

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• The Internet is an élite organization; most of the population of the world has never even made a phone call.

  Noam Chomsky

  Phones, Organization, Population

  Quoted in Observer, 18 Feb. 1996

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• Anywhere in Latin America there is a potential threat of the pathology of caudillismo and it has to be guarded against.

  Noam Chomsky

  Latin, America, Pathology

  "Noam Chomsky on Venezuela". Interview with Rory Carroll, www.theguardian.com. July 4, 2011.

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• You don't get to be a respected intellectual by uttering truisms in monosyllables.

  Noam Chomsky

  Intellectual, Truism

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• Roughly speaking, I think it's accurate to say that a corporate elite of managers and owners governs the economy and the political system as well, at least in very large measure.

  Noam Chomsky

  Thinking, Political, Economics

  Noam Chomsky, Carlos Peregrín Otero (2003). “Chomsky on Democracy and Education”, p.146, Psychology Press

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• One of the questions asked in that study was, How many Vietnamese casualties would you estimate that there were during the Vietnam war? The average response on the part of Americans today is about 100,000. The official figure is about two million. The actual figure is probably three to four million. The people who conducted the study raised an appropriate question: What would we think about German political culture if, when you asked people today how many Jews died in the Holocaust, they estimated about 300,000? What would that tell us about German political culture?

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Thinking, Average

  "Media Control". Book by Noam Chomsky, 1991.

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• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

  Noam Chomsky

  Sleep, Ideas, Psychology

  Syntactic Structures ch. 2 (1957)

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• In fact, it's doing it all over the world. Obama, first of all, is running the biggest terrorist operation that exists, maybe in history. The drone assassination campaigns, which are just part of it. All of these operations, they are terror operations.

  Noam Chomsky

  Running, Drones, Campaigns

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• U.S. domestic drug policy does not carry out its stated goals, and policymakers are well aware of that. If it isn't about reducing substance abuse, what is it about? It is reasonably clear, both from current actions and the historical record, that substances tend to be criminalized when they are associated with the so-called dangerous classes, that the criminalization of certain substances is a technique of social control.

  Noam Chomsky

  Class, Goal, Historical

  "On the War on Drugs". Week Online interview, chomsky.info. February 8, 2002.

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• Where are the drug cartels getting their weapons? They are being provided by the United States. Cut off that flow of arms.

  Noam Chomsky

  Cutting, Drug Cartels, United States

  "Noam Chomsky: Drug Cartels and the Growing Border War". Interview with Luis Fernando Cárdenas, chomsky.info. August 15, 2011.

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• England shouldn't have the real freedom of vote and we shouldn't either. Because as [James Madison] put it, one of the primary goals of government was to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority, to make sure the opulent maintain their rights. The constitutional system was structured to ensure that outcome.

  Noam Chomsky

  Real, Rights, Government

  Source: chomsky.info

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• A lot of countries break (or go against) the international law.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, Law, Break

  Source: thehumanist.com

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• In a really business-run society like the United States, the business elites are deeply committed to class struggle and are engaged in it all the time. They're instinctive Marxists.

  Noam Chomsky

  Running, Struggle, Class

  "Chomsky: "The Business Elites ... Are Instinctive Marxists"". Interview with Keane Bhatt, www.truth-out.org. November 19, 2010.

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• All forms of involuntary servitude are prohibited, not only slavery but also conscription, forced association, and forced welfare distribution.

  Noam Chomsky

  Slavery, Association, Welfare

  Source: thefifthcolumnnews.com

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• If [Barack] Obama or the boss or the newspapers or anyone else tells you they're doing this, that, or the other thing, dismiss it or assume the opposite is true, which it often is.

  Noam Chomsky

  Often Is, Opposites, Boss

  Source: www.iww.org

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• You have to rely on yourself and your associates - gifts don't come from above; you're going to win them, or you won't have them.

  Noam Chomsky

  Winning, Rely On Yourself, Rely

  Source: www.iww.org

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• You win by struggle, and that requires understanding and serious analysis of the options and the circumstances, and then you can do a lot.

  Noam Chomsky

  Struggle, Winning, Understanding

  Source: www.iww.org

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• To some degree it matters who's in office, but it matters more how much pressure they're under from the public.

  Noam Chomsky

  Peace, War, Office

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• I don't feel that there is anything deep in the political culture that prevents "educating the masses." I'm old enough to recall vividly the high level of culture, general and political, among first-generation working people during the Great Depression. Workers' education was lively and effective, union-based - mostly the vigorous rising labor movement, reviving from the ashes of the 1920s. I've often seen independent and impressive initiatives in working-class and poor and deprived communities today.

  Noam Chomsky

  Independent, People, Community

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• The people who were honored in the Bible were the false prophets. It was the ones we call the prophets who were jailed and driven into the desert.

  Noam Chomsky

  People, Desert, Driven

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• In fact, a rather striking aspect of business propaganda in the United States is the demonization of government, starting after the Second World War.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Government, United States

  Source: www.iww.org

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• The contradiction is somehow unresolved. In the case of the business propaganda, it's particularly ironic because while business wants the population to hate the government, they want the population to love the government. Namely, they're in favor of a very powerful state which works in their interest.

  Noam Chomsky

  Powerful, Hate, Government

  Source: www.iww.org

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• I don't encourage socialists or anarchists to accept falsehoods, in particular, to see revolutionary potential where there is none.

  Noam Chomsky

  Revolutionary, Anarchist, Accepting

  Source: libcom.org

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• The Second World War had really devastating effects for much of Europe. It really didn't take them very long to reconstruct state capitalist democracies because it was in people's heads. There were other parts of the world that were pretty much devastated and they couldn't do it; they didn't have the conceptions in their mind. A lot of it is human consciousness.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Europe, Long

  Source: pennpoliticalreview.org

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• Most of intellectuals are false prophets, flatterers of the court. The real prophets are the exception and treated badly. How badly they're treated depends on the society. Like in Eastern Europe, they were treated very badly. In Latin America, they were slaughtered.

  Noam Chomsky

  Real, Latin, Europe

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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