Noam Chomsky

My guess is that you would find that the intellectual elite is the most heavily indoctrinated sector [of society], for good reasons. It’s their role as a secular priesthood to really believe the nonsense that they put forth. Other people can repeat it, but it’s not that crucial that they really believe it. But for the intellectual elite themselves, it’s crucial that they believe it because, after all, they are the guardians of the faith. Except for a very rare person who’s an outright liar, it’s hard to be a convincing exponent of the faith unless you’ve internalized it and come to believe it.

The word terrorism has a meaning, it is defined in the US and international law and so on. But that’s not the definition we are allowed to use. We use the word terrorism in a way which means there’s terrorism against us but not our terrorism against them. That’s not terrorism. So for example, if we use the word “terrorism” in its litteral meaning, the most extreme terrorist operation in the world today would be Obama’s global assassination campaign, the drone campaign

…there is definitely a sector of the population that considers themselves threatened by big forces, ranging from the Federal Reserve to the Council on Foreign Relations to big government to who knows what and are calling for guns to protect themselves.

The CIA is mainly a branch of the executive to carry out secret and usually illegal activities that the executive branch wants. It wants them to be kept secret because it knows that the public won’t accept them. So it’s highly undemocratic even domestically.

Much of the world must be astonished-if they are not collapsing in laughter-while watching the performances in high places and in media concerning Russian efforts to influence an American election, a familiar US government specialty as far back as we choose to trace the practice.

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term ‘conservatism’ can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country’s future.

Take the firearms first, and then go to court. A lot of times by the time you go to court, it takes so long to go to court to get the due process procedures, I like taking the guns early … Take the gun first, go through due process second.

We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and hire American.

The news that appears on social media, let’s say on Facebook, is drawn from the major media…The fact remains that the basic source of news, information, opinion and analysis is still the major media.

There is no way you’re going to have an event like 9/11 and expect things to remain the same. They killed 3,000 people in New York on that day, and if they could have they would’ve killed 300,000.

People apply for a job, are asked to work for three or four weeks on probation and are then told to go and are replaced by colleagues. There are shops even in the West End [of London] using large numbers of totally unpaid staff on a permanent basis.

The Ethiopian government’s use of the railway from Djibouti to Addis Ababa was, in practice, a hazardous regards transport of arms intended for the Ethiopian forces.

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.

The option preferred by the privileged is for the fate of everyone else to be in the hands of insurance company executives whose goal, as Milton Friedman can explain, is to ensure maximum profit and market share: meaning the worst possible health care.

It’s not a very big thing to say, ‘I made a mistake’ on the war, and typical of Hillary Clinton that she can’t.

My life’s work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

If we do not believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we do not believe in it at all.

Comparing the EU to the Soviet Union is as unwise as it is insulting. The Soviet Union was about prisons and gulags, borders and walls, violence against citizens and neighbours. The European Union is about freedom and human rights, prosperity and peace, life without fear, it is about democracy and pluralism – a continent without internal borders and walls.

I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.

One fundamental goal of any well-crafted indoctrination program is to direct attention elsewhere, away from effective power, its roots, and the disguises it assumes.