Noam Chomsky Quotes - Page 59

• The shutdown itself is bad but not devastating. The real danger will come up in a couple of weeks. There's legislation which is in fact routine - it's passed every year - which allows the government to borrow money, otherwise it can't function. If Congress does not approve this budget request, the government may have to default.

  Noam Chomsky

  Couple, Real, Government

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Suppose I try to say the US carries out terror, in fact it's one of the leading terrorist states in the world. You can't say that between commercials. People rightly want to know what do you mean. They've never heard that before. Then you have to explain. You have to give background. That's exactly what's cut out.

  Noam Chomsky

  Mean, Cutting, People

  "Noam Chomsky on America's Economic Suicide". Interview with Laura Flanders, www.alternet.org. May 4, 2012.

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• When I am at home, I never watch TV, but when I am abroad in a hotel I take a look at the BBC to find out what's going on.

  Noam Chomsky

  Home, Watches, Looks

  Source: www.brooklynrail.org

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• Many of the people who voted for Trump were people who voted for Obama eight years ago. You remember, of course, his message was "hope and change." People wanted change, for good reasons, and they wanted hope. Disillusioned with what took place, they turned to someone else who was offering hope and change. When they're disillusioned with that, it depends on what activists and others do.

  Noam Chomsky

  Eight, Offering, Years

  Source: www.brooklynrail.org

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• The desire for hope and change is easily understandable. In many ways it's even more dramatic in Europe.

  Noam Chomsky

  Europe, Desire, Way

  Source: www.brooklynrail.org

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• Real wages for male workers in the United States are about what they were in the '60s.

  Noam Chomsky

  Real, Males, United States

  Source: www.brooklynrail.org

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• I think there are real possibilities of reaching out to many of the Trump voters, those who voted for Obama believing his rhetoric.

  Noam Chomsky

  Real, Believe, Thinking

  Source: www.brooklynrail.org

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• 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

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• A more appropriate expansion is the statement "it is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies" a transcript of a talk to a writers conference in Australia in 1996, where I had been asked to talk on "writers and intellectual responsibility" - a question that I said I found "puzzling," because I knew of nothing to say about it beyond truisms, though these were perhaps worth affirming because they are "so commonly denied, if not in words, then in consistent practice."

  Noam Chomsky

  Lying, Responsibility, Practice

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• I don't suggest that the observations are surprising or profound. Rather, they seem to me the merest truisms. I was not aware that [ Michel] Foucault had used the phrase "speaking truth to power." I had thought it was an old Quaker phrase.

  Noam Chomsky

  Profound, Phrases, Quaker

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• It also seems beyond controversy that moral responsibilities are greater to the extent that people "have the resources, the training, the facilities and opportunities to speak and act effectively."

  Noam Chomsky

  Responsibility, Opportunity, People

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• [Moral responsibilities] has nothing particular to do with academia, except insofar as those within it tend to be unusually privileged in the respects just mentioned.

  Noam Chomsky

  Responsibility, Academia, Moral

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• If commissars in Soviet Russia agreed to subordinate themselves to state power, they could at least plead fear in extenuation. Their counterparts in more free and open societies can plead only cowardice.

  Noam Chomsky

  Russia, Cowardice, States

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• The intellectual is an individual with a specific public role in society that cannot be reduced simply to . . a faceless professional.

  Noam Chomsky

  Intellectual, Roles, Individual

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• Edward Said is a very honorable representative of the "intellectual" in the sense of the term that he defines.

  Noam Chomsky

  Intellectual, Said, Honorable

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• That is [Edward Said] proposal as to how the term should be used. It surely does not describe those who are called "intellectuals" in standard usage, as he would be the first to agree.

  Noam Chomsky

  Firsts, Doe, Would Be

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• Intellectuals (in the standard sense of the term, not [ Edward] Said's prescriptive sense) are the people who write history.

  Noam Chomsky

  Writing, People, Said

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• If the authors and custodians of history turn out to have an attractive image, it is only reasonable to look beyond and ask whether the image they construct is accurate.

  Noam Chomsky

  Custodians, Looks, Attractive

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• I think such an inquiry will reveal a rather different picture: namely, it will reveal a very strong tendency for the intellectuals who are respected and privileged to be those who subordinate themselves to power.

  Noam Chomsky

  Strong, Thinking, Different

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• To use the terms that are reserved for official enemies, it is the commissars and apparatchiks, not the dissidents, who are respected and privileged within their own societies.

  Noam Chomsky

  Enemy, Use, Term

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• I know of people whose actions and words I admire and respect. Some are called "intellectuals," some are not.

  Noam Chomsky

  People, Action, Admire

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• History records endless struggles to enlarge those realms, inspiring ones; it also records painful reversals and setbacks.

  Noam Chomsky

  Struggle, Records, Painful

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• What can realistically be done depends on the historical moment. The same is true with regard to the agents.

  Noam Chomsky

  Historical, Done, Agents

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• In general, we should be able to agree that those who have greater opportunities and face fewer impediments have a greater responsibility to do more to help achieve such ends.

  Noam Chomsky

  Responsibility, Opportunity, Able

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• Those of us lucky enough to have a share of privilege in the more free societies should not be asking this question, but doing something to answer it.

  Noam Chomsky

  Lucky, Asking, Answers

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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