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Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky Quotes

Linguist

Noam Chomsky, born on December 7, 1928, is a renowned linguist from the United States. His research in generative grammar and transformational grammar has had a profound impact on modern linguistics. Chomsky's academic achievements extend beyond linguistics, as he is also an active political commentator and philosopher, known for his unique perspective and profound insights.

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Famous Noam Chomsky Quotes

“If North Korea doesn't have a deterrent, they will be wiped out.”

Ifs Korea North Korea Deterrent

Author:Noam Chomsky

“We use the official definitions of terrorism. The definitions in the U.S. code, in British law, in U.S. Army manuals and so on. And if you use those definitions it follows instantly that the United States is the leading terrorist state in the world.”

Ifs World States Use Law United United States Army Definitions British Terrorism Terrorist Code Officials Manuals

Author:Noam Chomsky

“And if you look at all this academic work in the conferences and so on there's a constant theme that terrorism is extremely hard to define and we therefore have to have a deep thinking about it. And the reason it's hard to define is quite simple. It's hard to find a definition that includes what they do to us but excludes what we do to them. That's quite difficult. So it takes a global war on terrorism.”

Ifs Thinking Looks War Hard Reason Difficult Simple Constant Definitions Terrorism Theme Academic Conferences War On Terror War On Terrorism Deep Thinking Academic Work

Author:Noam Chomsky

“Take a look at the Supreme Court decision that just authorized an effort by U.S. claimants against Iran for terrorist acts. What are the terrorist acts? The terrorist acts are bombings of U.S. military installations in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, which Iran is claimed to have something to do with. Well suppose they did. That's not terrorism. I mean if we have a military base in Lebanon that while we're shelling Lebanese naval ships, the Navy is shelling Lebanese installations and somebody attacks [that's not terrorism].”

“In fact if you look at Reagan's global war on terrorism it very quickly turned into a massive terrorist war: [by us] Central America, South Africa, the Middle East, all U.S.-backed terrorism. That's one of the reasons why it disappeared from history and why the standard line is that Bush 43 declared the war on terror. Actually he just repeated what Reagan had said 20 years earlier.”

“Well, in fact if you look at the Trump voters, you take a look at their attitudes it's not all that different. In some respects they're similar. They're an older version of the Sanders people. So a lot of it is racist and you have that sort of thing, but if you look at their views on say health, education, and so on, it's kind of the same as Sanders.”

People Ifs Wells Looks Kind Different Facts Views Attitude Trump Versions Racist Voters Health Education

Author:Noam Chomsky

“My feeling is that if any Republican was elected it would be almost a death knell for the species literally, just because of their attitude on climate change.”

Ifs Feelings Would Be Attitude Republican Climate Species Climate Change

Author:Noam Chomsky

“You ought to teach kids that elections take place but that's not politics. If you want to know how legislation is made it doesn't come from elections.”

Ifs Knows Want Made Kids Teach Know How Ought Election Made It Legislation

Author:Noam Chomsky

“Its minority rule and majority limited rights. In fact it's set up that way. If you read the framers of the constitution, including James Madison, he was pretty clear about it.”

Ifs Way Facts Clear Rights Constitution Majority Including Minorities Madison Framers

Author:Noam Chomsky

“If you look at the minutes of the constitutional convention - which we have - Madison who was the main framer, proceeded to develop a system in which - as he put it - power would be in the hands of the wealth of the nation, the more responsible set of men and who recognize the need to protect the rights of property owners. That's why in the constitutional system, the most powerful part of the whole system is the senate.”

Ifs Men Needs Looks Whole Hands Would Be Nations Wealth Powerful Rights Minutes Protect Responsible Property Owners Most Powerful Senate Conventions Madison Framers Constitutional Convention

Author:Noam Chomsky

“If current tendencies persist, the outcome will be disastrous before too long. Large parts of the world will become barely habitable affecting hundreds of millions of people, along with other disasters that we can barely contemplate.”

People Ifs World Long Millions Currents Disaster Tendencies Outcomes Contemplating Persist

Author:Noam Chomsky

“The Fourteenth Amendment, after the civil war, in principle brought former slaves into the category of persons, theoretically. But if you actually look, almost all the cases brought up for personal rights under the Fourteenth Amendment were by corporations. Freed slaves couldn't do it. In fact they were pretty much driven back into something like slavery by a north - south compact, that allowed former slave states to criminalize black life, which made a criminal force that was basically used as a forced labor force, up until the 1930s.”

“If you want to become a biologist, it doesn't help to go into the Harvard biology library and all the information is there for you. You have to know what to look for and the internet is the same, just magnified.”

Ifs Knows Want Looks Helping Information Internet Library Biology Harvard Biologist

Author:Noam Chomsky

“Just take ease of interchange between people. Your email is of course faster than letter - on the other hand the transition from sailing ship to telegraphs was far greater than the shift from the postal service to email. That was a fabulous change. If you sent a letter to England, instead of waiting a couple of months for a response you got it instantly. That's a huge change. Every one of these changes of course increases opportunities and also increases means of control and domination.”

“I am thinking of actual cases of adolescents, lets say, who think they have five hundred friends, because there are five hundred people on their Facebook account. But these are the kind of friends whose relation to you is that if you say 'I bought a sandwich'; they say 'did it taste good?' You know, that's a kind of interaction, but very different to having a real friend, somebody who you can actually talk to.”

People Ifs Thinking Knows Kind Different Real Cases Five Taste Hundred Accounts Relation Interaction Real Friends Sandwiches Kinds Of Friends

Author:Noam Chomsky

“A lot of the letters that are coming in - a lot of them are queries or comments - are one sentence long... These are from Twitter. And if you look at the nature of those one sentence letters, most of the time it's something that came to somebody's mind - somebody walking down the street had a thought and sent it out. If they thought about it for two minutes they would not have sent it.”

Ifs Mind Looks Long Two Streets Minutes Walking Letters Sentences Comment One Sentence Queries

Author:Noam Chomsky

“Very commonly I get queries. Somebody saw something of mine on YouTube and of course if there is a talk on YouTube, there aren't any footnotes - and they want to know why did you say this. Well if they bothered to look up something in print, they would've seen why I said that. If they ask for evidence, I just say well take a look and mention something they can read and that usually ends the conversation.”

Ifs Knows Want Wells Looks Said Ends Courses Asks Saws Mines Conversation Evidence Look Up Print Bothered Youtube Footnotes Queries

Author:Noam Chomsky

“Some of the younger people afford hope for the future. I am not opposed to reform initiatives. For example, if you can build up enough popular support in the United States to put through a reasonable health care program or to support the rights of the working people against the version of NAFTA which was rammed through, these can be good things.”

People Ifs States Enough Care United United States Support Rights Example Program Good Things Be Good Versions Reform Health Care Reasonable Initiative Hope For The Future Nafta

Author:Noam Chomsky

“The whole intelectual culture has a filtering system, starts as a child in school. You're expected to accept certain beliefs, styles, behavioral patterns and so on. If you don't accept them, you are called maybe a behavioral problem, or something, and you're weeded out. Something like that goes on all the way through universities and graduate schools. There is an implicit system of filtering, which has the, it creates a strong tendency to impose conformism. Now, it's a tendency, so you do have exceptions, and sometimes the exceptions are quite striking.”

Ifs Way Children Sometimes Whole Problem School Certain Culture Belief Strong Accepting Style Goes On University Patterns Expected Tendencies Exception Graduates Implicit Graduate School

Author:Noam Chomsky

“In Western Europe, Turkey is regarded as uncivilized, so they can't come in into the European Union until they're civilized. I think it's the other way around. If you could achieve the level of civilization of, say, Turkish intelectuals, it would be quite an achievement.”

Ifs Thinking Way Would Be Levels Achieve Civilization Achievement Europe Unions Western Civilized Turkeys European Union Turkish Western Europe Uncivilized

Author:Noam Chomsky

“No liberal newspaper ever talked about the invasion of Vietnam; they talked about the defense of Vietnam. And then they were saying, "well, it's not going well." Ok, that make them liberal. It's like, it's if we were to say, that going back to, say, Nazi Germany, that Hitler's general staff was liberal after Stalingrad because they were criticizing his tactics: "It was a mistake to fight a two front war, we should've knocked off Englad first," or something.”

Ifs Should Firsts Wells Two War Fighting Mistake Fronts Defense Newspapers Germany Criticize Vietnam Staff Nazi Tactics Invasion Nazi Germany Stalingrad

Author:Noam Chomsky

“What the polls don't tell you is, though other polls do, is that if you do a study of CEOs, top executives in corporations, they're liberal.”

Ifs Study Corporations Executives Ceo Polls

Author:Noam Chomsky

“If you listen to the talk shows, which are rabid right-wing, and very interesting, an important fact about the United States, they reach a huge audience. And they're very uniform. So right wing, I don't think you can even find an analog in your, but they reach a mass audience, and their view is that the corporations are liberal. Their appeal to the population is, "the country is run by liberals, they own the corporations, they run the government, they own the media, and they don't care about us ordinary people."”

“I really suggest listening to talk radio. I mean, if you just listen to what the talk hosts are saying, they sound like they are lunatics.”

Ifs Mean Sound Listening Radio Host Just Listen Talk Radio

Author:Noam Chomsky

“No one is concerned with Central America anymore. If a million people are facing starvation in northern Nicaragua and Honduras, it's none of our business. Few people even recognize that this situation is in part an outgrowth of US policies going back to the 1980's. Nobody is concerned because Nicaragua is technically stable.”

People Ifs America Situation Millions Policy Concerned Stable Starvation Nicaragua Central America Honduras

Author:Noam Chomsky

“If you look at say, England and Germany a century ago, which had the most advanced navies then, they were dealing with extremely tricky technological problems. Putting a huge gun on a moving platform and ensuring that it could hit another moving target was one of the hardest technical problems of the early twentieth century.”

Ifs Looks Problem Moving Century Huge Gun England Hardest Germany Target Platforms Technological Navy Twentieth Century Tricky

Author:Noam Chomsky

“If you take an economics or a political science course, you're taught that humans are supposed to be rational wealth accumulators, each acting as an individual to maximize his own wealth in the market.”

Ifs Humans Political Courses Individual Wealth Acting Taught Economics Rational Supposed To Be Political Science

Author:Noam Chomsky

“If there are dollars to be made, you destroy the environment. The reason is elementary. The people who are going to be harmed by this are your grandchildren and they don't have any votes in the market. Their interests are worth zero. Anybody that pays attention to their grandchildren's interests is being irrational. Because what you're supposed to do is maximize your own interests, measured by wealth, right now. Nothing else matters. So destroying the environment and militarizing outer space are rational policies, but within a framework of institutional lunacy.”

“If you accept the institutional lunacy, then the policies are rational.”

Ifs Accepting Policy Rational Lunacy

Author:Noam Chomsky

“Another problem is the confrontation with India. Pakistan just cannot survive if it continues to do so (continue this confrontation).”

Ifs Problem India Pakistan Confrontation India Pakistan

Author:Noam Chomsky

“The military has a huge role in the economy [of Pakistan] with big stakes and, as you say, it has constantly intervened to make sure that it keeps its hold on policy making. Well, I hope, and there seem to be some signs, that the military is taking a backseat, not really in the economy, but in some of the policy issues. If that can continue, which perhaps it will, this will be a positive development.”

Ifs Wells Bigs Seems Roles Economy Issues Military Policy Huge Development Stakes Pakistan Backseat Policy Making

Author:Noam Chomsky

“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.”

Ifs Said Able Father Car Example Late Jew Weekend Countryside 1930s Motels

Author:Noam Chomsky

“A 1998 study was done in Hebrew by an Israeli scholar, Yosef Grodzinsky, and the English translation of the title is Good Human Material. That's what they wanted sent to Palestine for colonization and for the eventual conflict that took place some years later. These policies were somewhat complementary to the U.S. policy of pressuring England to allow Jews to go to Palestine, but not allowing them here. The British politician Ernest Bevin was quite bitter about it, asking, "if you want to save the Jews, why send them to Palestine when you don't admit them?"”

“In general, the attitude towards Nazi Germany was not that hostile, especially if you look at the U.S. State Department reports. In 1937 the State Department was describing Adolf Hitler as a "moderate" who was holding off the forces of the right and the left.”

Ifs Looks States Left Force Attitude Germany Department Reports Nazi Hostile Moderates Describing Nazi Germany

Author:Noam Chomsky

“George Kennan is another extreme case. He was the American consul in Berlin until the war between Germany and the United States broke out in December 1941. And until then he was writing pretty supportive statements back stressing that we shouldn't be so hard on the Nazis if they were doing something we didn't agree with - basically repeating the idea that they were people we could do business with.”

People Ifs Writing Ideas War Hard States United Cases United States Stress Agree Extremes Statements Broke Germany Nazi Supportive Berlin December

Author:Noam Chomsky

“There's a strong nativist tradition - saying, "we have to protect ourselves" - that comes from the founding of the country. If you read Benjamin Franklin, who was one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment in the United States and the most distinguished representative of the movement here, he actually advised that the newly founded republic should block Germans and Swedes because they were too "swarthy" - dark.”

Ifs Should Country States Strong Dark United United States Figures Movement Protect Enlightenment Tradition Block Republic Representatives Founding Distinguished Franklin

Author:Noam Chomsky

“If you take a look at places like Harvard, it's striking. In the early ,50s, I think there were a handful of Jewish professors, three or four. But by the 1960s, there were Jewish deans and administrators. In fact, one of the reasons why MIT became a great university was because they admitted Jews whereas Harvard did not.”

Ifs Thinking Looks Reason Facts Three Four University Jew Reason Why Professors Handful 1960s Harvard Dean Administrators Mit

Author:Noam Chomsky

“You can read it in history books now, but they often suppress the fact that the U.S. government tolerated [Nazi]. It's really remarkable because they claim that [Franklin] Roosevelt was impeded by the Neutrality Act. On the other hand, he bitterly condemned a Mexican businessman for sending several guns to the Republic. If you look back, oil was the one commodity that [Francisco] Franco could not receive from the Germans and the Italians, so that was quite significant.”

Ifs Looks Book Facts Hands Government Gun Claims Oil Significant Remarkable Republic Commodity Nazi Businessman Mexican Franklin Neutrality History Books Franco Francisco Franco

Author:Noam Chomsky

“If you look at the Associated Press wires, there's a constant flow of information coming in. At that time I happened to have direct access to AP wires. The day the marines landed in Haiti and restored [ Jan Bètran] Aristide there was a lot of excitement about the dedication to democracy and so on. But the day before the marines landed, when every journalist was looking at Haiti because it was assumed that something big was happening, the AP wires reported that then [Bill] Clinton administration had authorized Texaco to ship oil illegally to the military junta.”

Ifs Looks Bigs Democracy Happened Military Information Happenings Flow Direct Bills Presses Constant Clinton Oil Access Ships Administration Journalist Excitement Dedication Marine Wire Haiti

Author:Noam Chomsky

“There's an interesting question, whether the anarchists had alternatives [in Spain]. If they did tend to support the government that had been destroyed, what were the alternatives? There was actually a proposal by Camillo Berneri, an Italian anarchist who was in Spain at the time, which is not a crazy notion in my opinion. He opposed participation in government and was against the formation of an army, meaning a major army to fight [Francisco] Franco.”

Ifs Government Fighting Interesting Opinion Support Crazy Majors Army Notion Destroyed Alternatives Italian Participation Spain Proposal Anarchist Formation Franco Francisco Franco

Author:Noam Chomsky

“[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.”

“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.”

Ifs Humans Persons Matter Can Do Effort Audience Definitions Circles Engaged Significance Speakers Associates Can Do Something

Author:Noam Chomsky

“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."”

Ifs Said Lying Found Speak Responsibility Practice Intellectual Statements Consistent Appropriate Australia Denied Expansion Conferences Speak The Truth Affirming Truism Puzzling

Author:Noam Chomsky

“Suppose that I see a hungry child in the street, and I am able to offer the child some food. Am I morally culpable if I refuse to do so? Am I morally culpable if I choose not to do what I easily can about the fact that 1000 children die every hour from easily preventable disease, according to UNICEF? Or the fact that the government of my own "free and open society" is engaged in monstrous crimes that can easily be mitigated or terminated? Is it even possible to debate these questions?”

Ifs Children Facts Government Able Dies Hours My Own Streets Crime Offers Disease Refuse Debate Hungry Engaged Monstrous Unicef

Author:Noam Chomsky

“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.”

Ifs States Russia Soviet Cowardice Subordinates Counterparts Soviet Russia

Author:Noam Chomsky

“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.”

Ifs Looks Turns Asks Attractive Reasonable Accurate Constructs Custodians

Author:Noam Chomsky

“An unstated but crucial premise is that the "responsible men" achieve that exalted status by their service to authentic power, a fact of life that they will discover soon enough if they try to pursue an independent path.”

Ifs Men Trying Enough Facts Path Achieve Responsible Independent Pursue Crucial Premises Facts Of Life Exalted Soon Enough

Author:Noam Chomsky

“Unaccountable private power concentrations that dominate economic and social life have the means to seek to "regiment the public mind," and become "tools and tyrants" of government, in James Madison's memorable phrase, as he warned of the threats he discerned to the democratic experiment if private powers were granted free rein.”

Ifs Mind Mean Government Social Economic Tools Threat Democratic Experiments Granted Phrases Memorable Concentration Tyrants Social Life Reins Madison

Author:Noam Chomsky

“Dissidents are not imprisoned as in the domains of the Kremlin, in the old days. They do not have their brains blown out by elite forces armed and trained by the reigning superpower, as happens in Washington's domains - with no particular concern at home - an important fact, one of many that help us learn about ourselves, if we choose.”

Ifs Important Facts Helping Home Happens Force Brain Particular Concern Elites Domain Old Days Superpower Dissidents Kremlin

Author:Noam Chomsky

“The reason I am a political radical is that I work on syntax. If I worked on semantics (which in fact I do), I'd be a good Thatcherite.”

Ifs Reason Facts Political Radical Syntax Semantics

Author:Noam Chomsky

About the Author

Born: December 7, 1928
Known for: Linguist
Quotes: 1825

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