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Noam Chomsky Quotes - Page 12

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In the American Jewish community, there is little willingness to face the fact that the Palestinian Arabs have suffered a monstrous historical injustice . . . Until this is recognized, discussion of the Middle East

In the American Jewish community, there is little willingness to face the fact that the Palestinian Arabs have suffered a monstrous historical injustice . . . Until this is recognized, discussion of the Middle East crisis cannot even begin.

Noam Chomsky
Community, Historical, Middle East
Noam Chomsky (2004). “Middle East Illusions: Including Peace in the Middle East? : Reflections on Justice and Nationhood”, p.43, Rowman & Littlefield

Suppose that, say, China established military bases in Colombia to carry out chemical warfare in Kentucky and North Carolina to destroy this lethal crop [tobacco] that is killing huge numbers of Chinese.

Noam Chomsky
Military, Kentucky, Numbers

The responsibilities of someone in a more free and open society are, again obviously, greater than those who may pay some cost for honesty and integrity.

Noam Chomsky
Honesty, Integrity, Responsibility
Source: www.publicanthropology.org

I am not sure just what Marx had in mind when he wrote that "philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." Did he mean that philosophy could change the world, or that philosophers should turn to the higher priority of changing the world? If the former, then he presumably meant philosophy in a broad sense of the term, including analysis of the social order and ideas about why it should be changed, and how. In that broad sense, philosophy can play a role, indeed an essential role, in changing the world.

Noam Chomsky
Philosophy, Mean, Priorities
"Noam Chomsky: On Trump and the State of the Union". Interview with George Yancy, www.nytimes.com. July 5, 2017.

The US has been the leading terrorist state in the world for many years.

Noam Chomsky
Years, World, States
Source: www.truth-out.org

The US is the wrecking machine that is destroying everything. The world is hoping that China will somehow come to the rescue.

Noam Chomsky
Machines, World, Destroying
Source: www.truth-out.org

From the U.S. point of view, negotiations are, in effect, a way for Israel to continue its policies of systematically taking over whatever it wants in the West Bank, maintaining the brutal siege on Gaza, separating Gaza from the West Bank and, of course, occupying the Syrian Golan heights, all with full U.S. support.

Noam Chomsky
Israel, Views, Support
"Noam Chomsky: While Syria descends into suicide, Israel and the US are enjoying the spectacle". Interview with Frank Barat, chomsky.info. September 7, 2013.

My position is that we should not succumb to irrational belief.

Noam Chomsky
Belief, Should, Irrational
Source: chomsky.info

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies.

Noam Chomsky
Government, Democracy, Corporations

The war against working people should be understood to be a real war…. Specifically in the U.S., which happens to have a highly class-conscious business class…. And they have long seen themselves as fighting a bitter class war, except they don’t want anybody else to know about it.

Noam Chomsky
Real, War, Fighting
Noam Chomsky (2004). “At War with Asia”, p.246, AK Press

Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.

Noam Chomsky
War, Terrorism, Killing
"9-11". Book by Noam Chomsky, 2001.

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.

Noam Chomsky
Army, Law, United States
"Anti-Intellectualism, Terrorism, and Elections in Contemporary Education: a Discussion with Noam Chomsky". Interview with Dan Falcone, www.counterpunch.org. June 3, 2016.

The elections are run by the same guys who sell toothpaste. They show you an image of a sports hero, or a sexy model, or a car going up a sheer cliff or something, which has nothing to do with the commodity, but it's intended to delude you into picking this one rather than another one.

Noam Chomsky
Sports, Sexy, Running

It's perfectly obvious that there is some genetic factor that distinguishes humans from other animals and that it is language-specific. The theory of that genetic component, whatever it turns out to be, is what is called universal grammar.

Noam Chomsky
Animal, Language, Theory

Look at the ozone story. As long as it was the southern hemisphere that was being threatened, there was very little talk about it. When it was discovered in the north, very quickly actions were taken to do something about it. Right now there's discussion of putting serious effort into developing a malaria vaccine, because global warming might extend malaria to the rich countries, so something should be done about it.

Noam Chomsky
Country, Taken, Rich Countries
Source: www.counterpunch.org

The drug problem is in the United States, not in Mexico. It's a demand problem and that is to be dealt with here, and it is not being dealt with. It's been shown over and over that prevention and treatment are far more cost effective than police action, out-of-country action, border control, and so on.

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

It is familiar to mainstream academic scholarship. One very prominent political scientist, in his standard text American Politics 20 years ago, observes that "The architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but not seen."

Noam Chomsky
Years, Political, United States
Source: www.publicanthropology.org

A fundamental element of human nature is the need for creative work, for creative inquiry, for free creation without the arbitrary limiting effects of coercive institutions. A decent society should maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to be realized.

Noam Chomsky
Creative, Needs, Arbitrary
Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault (2013). “The Chomsky - Foucault Debate: On Human Nature”, p.35, The New Press

Right now, huge numbers of people cannot obtain even drinking water, and the situation is likely to become worse with predicted climate change and failure to take the actions that are necessary.

Noam Chomsky
Drinking, People, Water
"Chat With Chomsky". www.washingtonpost.com. March 24, 2006.

The United States in many ways resembles a Third World country - far more elevated, but it has many of those structural characteristics: the extreme inequality of wealth, the deterioration of infrastructure because it only serves poor people, predatory operations, huge corruption, and so on.

Noam Chomsky
Country, People, United States
"Chomsky: "The Business Elites... Are Instinctive Marxists"". Interview with Keane Bhatt, truth-out.org. November 19, 2010.

If workers are more insecure, that's very 'healthy' for the society, because if workers are insecure, they won't ask for wages, they won't go on strike, they won't call for benefits; they'll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that's optimal for corporations' economic health.

Noam Chomsky
Insecure, Healthy, Wages

We must present a national persona of being irrational and vindictive, because that's going to terrify people. And then, they'll back off. And this is not [Donald] Trump, this is [Bill] Clinton. It's not [Richard] Nixon, you know. We have to be irrational and vindictive, because that's going to frighten people.

Noam Chomsky
People, Bills, Clinton
Source: www.counterpunch.org

During the 1960s, large groups of people who are normally passive and apathetic began to try to enter the political arena to press their demands.... The naive might call that democracy, but that's because they don't understand. The sophisticated understand that that's the crisis of democracy.

Noam Chomsky
People, Political, Democracy
"Manufacturing Consent". Noam Chomsky's Lecture at the University of Wisconsin in in Madison, Wisconsin, March 15, 1989.

The beauty of our system is that it isolates everybody. Each person is sitting alone in front of the tube, you know. It's very hard to have ideas or thoughts under those circumstances. You can't fight the world alone.

Noam Chomsky
Fighting, Ideas, Sitting
"Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media". Documentary, Biography, War, www.imdb.com. 1992.

Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that's so deep in history that there's no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.

Noam Chomsky
Memories, Law, Presumption Of Innocence

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