Noam Chomsky

It is quite possible-overwhelmingly probable, one might guess-that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology

There were gleeful reports in American military publications about the exciting spectacle of a huge flood of water wiping out the rice crops [in North Korea] on which “the Asian” depends for survival. They are very much worth reading, a useful part of historical memory.

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.

Over the last 25 years, the major popular movements that have had significant impact on the general society and have changed it, that have had a major civilizing effect – the feminist movement, the environmental movement, and so on – these are mostly developments of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Their roots might be in the activism of the ‘60s, but the movements themselves developed and extended later. The same is true of the changes in respect for other cultures, rights of oppressed people, and so on. These are quite significant changes. If you compare the United States now to what it was, say, 35 years ago, the changes are quite dramatic. These are changes in popular consciousness that are quite deeply embedded.

There’s an array of terms of abuse [in the U.S.], like “Marxist,” but it doesn’t matter really, it’s a very free society. So if you’re vilified by some commissars, who cares, you go on-you do your work anyway.

It’s the first time in American history that a candidate [Sanders] probably could have won, if it hadn’t been for party managers who kept him out, with no funding from the corporate sector, and no funding from the wealthy, and no media support.

I hold it to be… a detestable maxim that, politically speaking, the people have a right to do anything.

I believe there’s too little patience and context to many of the investigations I read or see on television.

It would be a mistake to link anything that Israel does to a certain circumstance. And it is a mistake to feel comfortable in any circumstance just because Israel did not act on it.

Yes, life in Chechnya so far looks more like a life after a natural disaster.

Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’. The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.

As a Zionist youth leader in the 1940’s, I was among those who called for a binational state in Mandatory Palestine. When a Jewish state was declared, I felt that it should have the rights of other states – no more, no less.

On behalf of our nation, I want to apologise to Brett and the entire Kavanaugh family for the terrible pain and suffering you have been forced to endure.

..people would like to think there’s somebody up there who knows what he’s doing. Since we don’t participate, we don’t control and we don’t even think about the questions of crucial importance, we hope somebody is paying attention who has some competence. Let’s hope the ship has a captain, in other words, since we’re not taking in deciding what’s going on. I think that’s a factor. But also, it is an important feature of the ideological system to impose on people the feeling that they are incompetent to deal with these complex and important issues; they’d better leave it to the captain. One device is to develop a star system, an array of figures who are often media creations or creations of the academic propaganda establishment, whose deep insights we are supposed to admire and to whom we must happily and confidently assign the right to control our lives and control international affairs.

I see that not everyone in the West has understood that the Soviet Union has disappeared from the political map of the world and that a new country has emerged with new humanist and ideological principles at the foundation of its existence.

Look, freedom is an overwhelming American notion. The idea that we want to see the world, the peoples of the world free is something that all of us subscribe to.

The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime. Only the guiding layers of a class have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events and the approval of the masses.

The Declaration on Strategic Partnership between India and Russia signed in October 2000 became a truly historic step. The developments in the first decade of the 21 century confirmed that it was a particularly significant and timely step.

The Eurasian union is a project meant to preserve the identities of nations and the historic Eurasian community in the new century, in a new world.

John McCain fought in Vietnam – I think that he has enough civilian blood on his hands.

So sure, if you can find a theory that has some real principles which are of some interest and you can draw conclusions from them which you can apply to interpreting the actual world around you then sure, that’s wonderful. If there are such theories, I am happy to see them.