Noam Chomsky

Unfortunately, you can’t vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place

Exaggerating slightly, in totalitarian countries the state decides the official line and everyone must then comply. Democratic societies operate differently. The line is never presented as such, merely implied. This involves brainwashing people who are still at liberty.

So, essentially, what President Trump is saying is, we’ll destroy your countries, slaughter you, impose brutal regimes, but if you try to get out, you’re not going to come here, because America is full.

The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the [“The US Donor Relief Act of 2017”] will add $1 trillion to deficits over the next decade. Virtually every economist generally agrees. But not 80 percent of Republican voters…

A ‘rogue state’ is a state that defies international laws and conventions, does not consider itself bound by the major treaties and conventions, World Court decisions-in fact, anything except the interests of its own leadership, the forces around the leadership that dominate policy.

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.

Debates, I hate.

Popularity may be united with hostility to the rights of the people, and the secret slave of tyranny may be the professed lover of freedom.

Advertisers will want, more generally, to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that interfere with the “buying mood”…and thus fit in with the spirit of the primary purpose of program purchases-the dissemination of a selling message.

We have before us the examples of the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. We must remember how long these required to achieve their union. When a solid foundation is laid, if the mason is able and his materials good, a strong house can be built.

In the US, first of all, the electoral system has been almost totally shredded. For a long time it’s been pretty much run by private concentrated spending but now it’s over the top. Elections increasingly over the years have been [public relations] extravaganzas.

Other human rights atrocities from African slavery to the killing fields of Cambodia, the Armenian and Rwandan Genocides are all of course to be remembered, but diluting their particularity or comparing degrees of evil does no good.

Let’s not turn this into blaming people who travel, work and migrate around Europe, let’s instead ensure governments respond to the needs of all communities and that unscrupulous employers that are grossly exploiting migrant workers and trying to limit their rights need to be dealt with.

[The general population – “the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders”] are allowed to vote every once in a while, pick out one of us smart guys. But then they are supposed to go home and do something else like watch football or whatever it may be.

Once wide coercive powers are given to government agencies…such powers cannot be effectively controlled.

I welcome David Cameron’s work. This idea, or programme, that he describes as a Big Society, as I understand it, means that the gaps between different groups of people should be bridged. I think this is a very democratic idea, and I support that.

Make decisions about the President’s personal security. He can overrule you, but don’t ask him to be the one to counsel caution.

I certainly wouldn’t sign the more moderate [bill]. I need a bill that gives this country tremendous border security. I have to have that. We have to have the wall.

A ‘rogue state’ is a state that defies international laws and conventions, does not consider itself bound by the major treaties and conventions, World Court decisions-in fact, anything except the interests of its own leadership, the forces around the leadership that dominate policy.

Nobody should pin their hopes on a miracle.

The glory of being a carrier pilot has certainly worn off.