Noam Chomsky

The real surprise in the [2016] election was the Sanders campaign, which broke with a long tradition of pretty much bought elections, and was stopped only by machinations of the Obama-Clinton party managers.

It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.

The more you can increase fear of drugs, crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all of the people.

So for example, worker- and community- controlled enterprises are germs of a future society within the present one. And those not only can be developed, but are being developed.

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me. I mean, there are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‘That person I see is a savage monster’; instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do. If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees. But then you take a look at what the corporation does, the effect of its legal structure, the vast inequalities in pay and conditions, and you see the reality is something far different.

Of course there are differences, but they are not fundamental. Nobody should have any illusions. The United States has essentially a one-party system and the ruling party is the business party.

As a musician, African American, guy out in Hollywood, all these different things, you know, everyone around me tried to pick my candidate for me, and then told me every time I said I liked Trump that I couldn’t say it out loud or my career would be over, or I’d get kicked out of the black community – because blacks, we’re supposed to have a monolithic thought, we can only be Democrats.

[on Michelle Obama] She’s fundamentally honest – goes out there, speaks her mind, jokes. She doesn’t parse her words or select them with an antenna for political correctness.

In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions.

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

The democratic choice Russian people made in the early 90’s is final.

When I read Paris Post-Modernist talk…what I see is intellectuals interacting with one another in ways which are incomprehensible to the public and, to be frank, incomprehensible to me.

[Governments are] …without exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.

…corporations are fundamentally illegitimate, …they don’t have to exist at all in their modern form. Just as other oppressive institutions – slavery, say, or royalty – have been changed or eliminated, so corporate power can be changed of eliminated.

[on Osama bin Laden’s death] no attempt whatsoever that I can see to arrest him and put him on trial, to go through that process.

In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

Obviously, I’m always thinking about it. A successor, in the ordinary sense of the word – no, the Russian people, the voters will decide who that will be. But of course I think that we should raise a new, young generation of leaders, responsible people who will be able to take on the responsibility of Russia.

The ‘corporatization of America’ during the past century [has been] an attack on democracy.

[on Trump] He is a very bright person, talented without any doubt.

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.