Noam Chomsky

The times are too difficult and the crisis too severe to indulge in schadenfreude. Looking at it in perspective, the fact that there would be a financial crisis was perfectly predictable: its general nature, if not its magnitude. Markets are always inefficient.

We also entered into what’s now called the sixth extinction, a rapid extinction of species, which is comparable to the fifth extinction 65 million years ago when an asteroid, huge asteroid, hit the Earth, we know.

The new crimes that the US and Israel were committing in Gaza as 2009 opened do not fit easily into any standard category-except for the category of familiarity.

The rascal multitude are the proper targets of the mass media and a public education system geared to obedience and training in needed skills, including the skill of repeating patriotic slogans on timely occasions.

The Obama policies [2016] are to try to pressure Mexico to keep Central American immigrants from coming anywhere near us. Who are the Central American immigrants? These are people fleeing from the wreckage left by US government policies.

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.

When the interests of the privileged and powerful are the guiding commitment of both political factions, people who do not share these interests tend to stay home.

I do have a relationship [with Putin] and I can tell you he’s very interested in what we’re doing here today

I am not a puppet. I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country.

The people of Aleppo have suffered like no one else for so long. There has to be a political solution.

Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.

You can’t make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.

So we’re destroying the environment for organized human life. We’re threatening a terminal disaster with regular nuclear confrontations. Anybody who has looked at the record, which is shocking, would have to conclude that it’s a miracle that we’ve survived this long.

It’s better not to argue with women.

In some intellectual circles, it is considered naive or foolish to be guided by moral principles. About this form of idiocy, I will have nothing to say.

Our democracy, our constitutional framework is really a kind of software for harnessing the creativity and political imagination for all of our people. The American democratic system was an early political version of Napster.

We will chase terrorists everywhere. If in an airport, then in the airport. So if we find them in the toilet, excuse me, we’ll rub them out in the outhouse. And that’s it, case closed.

He who votes does not have power. He who counts the votes has power.

I couldn’t wait to get to the most powerful position, because I thought then I would be able to fix problems that only the leader can fix. But when I got there, I realized we needed revolutionary change.

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

Our only real hope for democracy is that we get the money out of politics entirely and establish a system of publicly funded elections.