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Noam Chomsky Quotes about Writing

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I don't bother writing about Fox News. It is too easy. What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, the ones who portray themselves and perceive themselves as challenging power, as courageous, as standing up for

I don't bother writing about Fox News. It is too easy. What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, the ones who portray themselves and perceive themselves as challenging power, as courageous, as standing up for truth and justice. They are basically the guardians of the faith. They set the limits. They tell us how far we can go. They say, 'Look how courageous I am.' But do not go one millimeter beyond that. At least for the educated sectors, they are the most dangerous in supporting power.

Noam Chomsky
Writing, Justice, Challenges
Institute Professor Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky, John Junkerman, Takei Masakazu (2015). “Power and Terror: Conflict, Hegemony, and the Rule of Force”, p.4, Routledge

A lot of the people involved in the media are very serious, honest people, and they will tell you, and I think they are right, that they are not being forced to write anything... What they don't tell you, and are maybe unaware of, is that they are allowed to write freely because their beliefs conform to the... standard doctrinal system, and then, yes, they are allowed to write freely and are not coerced.

Noam Chomsky
Writing, Thinking, Media
Source: theanarchistlibrary.org

So if you look at the writings of intellectuals, there are two kinds. One said, l"Look, if we fought harder we could have won.But the others, who were way at the left, people like Anthony Lewis of the New York Times, way out in left stream, his view in 1975 was the Vietnam war began with blundering efforts to do good. But by 1969, it was clear that it was a disaster, that was too costly to us.

Noam Chomsky
New York, War, Writing
Source: www.counterpunch.org

A lot of the people involved in the media are very serious, honest people, and they will tell you, and I think they are right, that they are not being forced to write anything.

Noam Chomsky
Writing, Thinking, Media
Source: theanarchistlibrary.org

Everyone engaged in research must have had the experience of working with feverish and prolonged intensity to write a paper which no one else will read or to solve a problem which no one else thinks important and which will bring no conceivable reward - which may only confirm a general opinion that the researcher is wasting his time on irrelevancies.

Noam Chomsky
Writing, Thinking, Important
Noam Chomsky (2013). “The Essential Chomsky”, p.24, The New Press

The Iraq War is the first war in history, in which there were huge demonstrations before the war was launched, not beginning five years later and then being broken up. All of these are changes, and the people who are writing in journals today lived through these changes.

Noam Chomsky
War, Writing, Years
Source: www.truth-out.org

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

I don't use the social media but I can see the effects in my own correspondence. I get a ton of correspondence. It used to be hard copy and now it's a very limited amount of actual letters people write. So it's mostly email.

Noam Chomsky
Writing, Media, People
Interview with Jegan Vincent de Paul, chomsky.info. August 15, 2012.

When [ Paul Johnson] got to me he was in trouble, because I'm an old-fashioned conservative: married when I was 21, stayed married, 3 kids, live in the suburbs, no scandals, so nothing to write about. So what he did is concoct one of the nuttiest claims I've ever seen.

Noam Chomsky
Writing, Kids, Scandal
Source: thefifthcolumnnews.com

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.

Noam Chomsky
War, Stress, Writing
Source: thehumanist.com

In fact, it's pretty dramatic when you get to 1975, very revealing, the [Vietnam] war ends. Everybody had to write something about the war, what it meant. You also had polls of public opinion, and they're dramatically different.

Noam Chomsky
War, Writing, Public Opinion
Source: www.counterpunch.org

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