Noam Chomsky

As long as people are marginalized and distracted [they] have no way to organize or articulate their sentiments, or even know that others have these sentiments. People assume that they are the only people with a crazy idea in their heads.

The core of the anarchist tradition, as I understand it, is that power is always illegitimate, unless it proves itself to be legitimate. So the burden of proof is always on those who claim that some authoritarian hierarchic relation is legitimate.

It’s perfectly obvious that there is some genetic factor that distinguishes humans from other animals and that it is language-specific. The theory of that genetic component, whatever it turns out to be, is what is called universal grammar.

The culture and ideology fostered in this globalization process relate largely to “lifestyle” themes and goods and their acquisition; and they tend to weaken any sense of community helpful to civic life.

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.

Organization and education, when they interact with each other, they strengthen each other, they are mutually supportive.

The laws ought to be so framed as to secure the safety of every citizen as much as possible. … Political liberty does not consist in the notion that a man may do whatever he pleases; liberty is the right to do whatsoever the laws allow. … The equality of the citizens consists in that they should all be subject to the same laws.

The price of being close to the President is delivering bad news. You fail him if you don’t tell him the truth. Others won’t do it.

The day I made that statement, about the inventing the internet, I was tired because I’d been up all night inventing the Camcorder.

The Drug War is an effort to stimulate fear of dangerous people from who we have to protect ourselves. It is also, a direct form of control of what are called “dangerous classes,” those superfluous people who don’t really have a function contributing to profit-making and wealth.

The reason why there is now no communist government in Paris is because in the circumstances of 1945 the Soviet army was not able to reach French soil.

Preventing the conflicts of tomorrow means changing the mindsets of the youth of today.

One can truly enjoy his or her life only while experiencing it, and it is inevitably related to a certain level of risk.

If you quietly accept and go along no matter what your feelings are, ultimately you internalize what you’re saying, because it’s too hard to believe one thing and say another. I can see it very strikingly in my own background. Go to any elite university and you are usually speaking to very disciplined people, people who have been selected for obedience. And that makes sense. If you’ve resisted the temptation to tell the teacher, ‘You’re an asshole,’ which maybe he or she is, and if you don’t say, ‘That’s idiotic,’ when you get a stupid assignment, you will gradually pass through the required filters. You will end up at a good college and eventually with a good job.

Debates, I hate.

We will not allow the past to drag us down and stop us from moving ahead. We understand where we should move.

Nuclear weapons are not a defence.

Of course we as Labour Party members must all be free to criticise and oppose injustice and abuse wherever we find it. But as today’s Report recommends, can we please leave Hitler and Nazi metaphors alone (especially in the context of Israel). Why? Because the Shoah is still in people’s family experience.

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

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

The devastating punch we took on September 11th still reverberates throughout American society.