Noam Chomsky (b. December 7, 1928):
Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.
As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.
Businesses try to maximize profit, power, market share and control over the state. Sometimes what they do helps other people, but that's just by chance.
Education is a condition of imposed ignorance!
Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.
How it is we have so much information, but know so little?
I think there is a good reason why the propaganda system works that way. It recognizes that the public will not support the actual policies. Therefore it is important to prevent any knowledge or understanding of them.
I think we can be reasonably confident that if the American population had the slightest idea of what is being done in their name, they would be utterly appalled.
I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
If you think the wrong thoughts, you're not in the system.
In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued- they may be essential to survival.
See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence.
Sports plays a societal role in engendering jingoist and chauvinist attitudes. They're designed to organize a community to be committed to their gladiators.
The country was founded on the principle that the primary role of government is to protect property from the majority, and so it remains.
The Internet is an elite organization; most of the population of the world has never even made a phone call.
The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.
The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.
The press is owned by wealthy men who only want certain things to reach the public.
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum- even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
There's a good reason why nobody studies history. It just teaches you too much.
To some degree it matters who's in office, but it matters more how much pressure they're under from the public.
“Tough love” is just the right phrase: love for the rich and privileged, tough for everyone else.
Unfortunately, you can't vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place.
We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.
You don't get to be a respected intellectual by uttering truisms in monosyllables.
You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.
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