Noam Chomsky

There was a recent study by the IMF which tried to estimate the subsidy that energy corporations get from governments. The total was colossal. I think it was around $5 trillion annually. That’s got nothing to do with markets and capitalism.

Our ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries. When we face a problem, we may not know its solution, but we have insight, increasing knowledge, and an inkling of what we are looking for. When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare in wonder and bewilderment, not knowing what an explanation would even look like.

That just fires up his worshipful base, providing more evidence that the hated liberal elites are trying to destroy the one guy in the political arena who is dedicated to defending the common folk – who he is shafting, with delight, at every opportunity.

Well, the Washington consensus – which is basically designed for the Third World to make it that way, and keep it that way – it’s now being applied not just to the Third World countries, but to the rich industrial societies, with the United States and Britain in the lead.

…I try to keep in mind the principle that one should not try to persuade; rather, to lay out the territory as best one can so that others can use their own intellectual powers to determine for themselves what they think is taking place and what is right or wrong.

The general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.

A society should never become like a pond with stagnant water, without movement. That’s the most important thing.

The major advances in speed of communication and ability to interact took place more than a century ago. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph was far more radical than that from telephone to email!

If current technological processes continue without change, the environment will change, and we, the human species, will either have to mutate or even die, to disappear, as many species have disappeared.

It is my view that we cannot conduct foreign policy at the extremes.

This American government – what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will.

Israeli interests are not necessarily in harmony with the American interests.

You can do a lot more with weapons and politeness than just politeness.

The Drug War is an effort to stimulate fear of dangerous people from who we have to protect ourselves. It is also, a direct form of control of what are called “dangerous classes,” those superfluous people who don’t really have a function contributing to profit-making and wealth.

I’ve made it clear my views on austerity and I’ve made it very clear my views on the Iraq War. And I promised that I would, and I did, give the apology on the anniversary of Iraq, and I stand by that, because I think it was a catastrophic mistake.

The ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren’t enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

In France, to break the powerful labor movement, the US occupying forces needed strikebreakers and, more generally, goons. They reconstituted the Corsican Mafia for that purpose and, in payment, allowed them to restore the old heroin connection based in Marseilles…

I’ve had a beautiful, I’ve had a flawless campaign. You’ll be writing books about this campaign.

So the growth of corporate propaganda in the United States more or less parallels the growth of democracy, for quite straightforward reasons. It’s not any kind of secret. It is discussed very frankly and openly in business literature and academic social-science journals.

Democracy don’t rule the world, you better get that in your head; this world is ruled by violence, but I guess that’s better left unsaid.