Noam Chomsky

Anarchism calls for an elimination to tyranny, all kinds of tyranny. Including the kind of tyranny that’s internal to private power concentrations. So why should we prefer it? Well I think because freedom is better than subordination. It’s better to be free than to be a slave.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

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.

Earlier in the twentieth century some critics called fascism capitalism with the gloves off, meaning that fascism was pure capitalism without democratic rights and organizations.

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

I would question the use of something as simplistic as IQ to come to any conclusions regarding human affairs.

In our system leadership is by consent, not command. To lead a President must persuade. Personal contacts and experiences help shape his thinking. They can be critical to his persuasiveness and thus to his leadership.

Does it mean I agree with Hamas and what it does? No. Does it mean I agree with Hezbollah and what they do? No. What it means is that I think to bring about a peace process, you have to talk to people with whom you may profoundly disagree … There is not going to be a peace process unless there is talks involving Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas and I think everyone knows that.

The documents of Japanese fascists are just overflowing with loving kindness…when they were carrying out huge massacres in China they were bringing an “earthly paradise” to China and protecting the people from the ‘bandits’ who were trying to undermine it and so on and so forth.

We still name our military helicopter gunships after victims of genocide. Nobody bats an eyelash about that: Blackhawk. Apache. And Comanche. If the Luftwaffe named its military helicopters Jew and Gypsy, I suppose people would notice.

The most important thing is that Milosevic agreed to sit at the negotiating table with the Kosovo Albanians.

If every human rights atrocity is described as a Holocaust,[Adolf] Hitler’s attempted obliteration of the Jewish people is diminished or de-recognised in our history.

I’m not a politician.

The U.S. government played a significant role [in the 1965 Indonesian genocide] by supplying the names of thousands of Communist Party leaders to the Indonesian army, which hunted down the leftists and killed them, former U.S. diplomats say…

The happiness of society is the end of government.

The Russian people and Russian culture are the linchpin, the glue that binds together this unique civilization.

Many countries are so weak that they can’t really solve their internal problems in the face of US power; they can’t even control their own wealthy. Their rich have virtually no social obligations-they don’t pay taxes and don’t keep their money in the country.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the undecideds could go one way or another.

Since Jimmy Carter, religious fundamentalists play a major role in elections. He was the first president who made a point of exhibiting himself as a born again Christian. That sparked a little light in the minds of political campaign managers: Pretend to be a religious fanatic and you can pick up a third of the vote right away. Nobody asked whether Lyndon Johnson went to church every day. Bill Clinton is probably about as religious as I am, meaning zero, but his managers made a point of making sure that every Sunday morning he was in the Baptist church singing hymns.

There was no collusion. Everybody knows there was no collusion.

The internet provides access to an extraordinary range of information, opinion, and interpretation. But as with any source, it is useful to the extent that it is used with discrimination and insight.