Noam Chomsky

My own view is that the CIA is very much under the control of executive power….It often looks as though it’s undertaking initiatives on its own, but that’s because the executive wants to preserve deniability.

Most problems of teaching are not problems of growth but helping cultivate growth. As far as I know, and this is only from personal experience in teaching, I think about ninety percent of the problem in teaching, or maybe ninety-eight percent, is just to help the students get interested. Or what it usually amounts to is to not prevent them from being interested. Typically they come in interested, and the process of education is a way of driving that defect out of their minds. But if children[‘s] … normal interest is maintained or even aroused, they can do all kinds of things in ways we don’t understand.

Trump himself seems to be having the time of his life. He’s constantly in the limelight, his loyal base worships his every move, he’s free to defy convention, to insult anyone he chooses, to disrupt the international economic and political order at will…

Well take, say a corporate executive By law, a corporate executive must work to increase the profitability of the corporation. Disregarding the effects that it has on others. That’s actually a legal principle and that’s psychopathic.

For many years, I have been writing and speaking about the danger of the rise of an honest and charismatic ideologue in the United States, someone who could exploit the fear and anger that has long been boiling in much of the society, and who could direct it away from the actual agents of malaise to vulnerable targets. That could indeed lead to what sociologist Bertram Gross called ‘friendly fascism’ in a perceptive study 35 years ago..

Debate cannot be stilled, and indeed, in a properly functioning system of propaganda, it should not be, because it has a system-reinforcing character if constrained within proper bounds. What is essential is to set the bounds firmly.

Oh my goodness gracious, what you can buy off the Internet in terms of overhead photography. A trained ape can know an awful lot of what is going on in this world, just by punching on his mouse, for a relatively modest cost.

When the Greek government suggested asking the people of Greece to express their opinions on their fate, the reaction of European elites was utter horror at the impudence. How can Greeks dare to regard democracy as a value to be respected in the country of its origin?

What I notice about men, all men, is that their order is me, my family, God is in there somewhere, but me is first.

…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.

Would I do business with Putin? Sure. And I’d challenge him on human rights in Russia, challenge him on these issues and challenge him on that whole basis of that relationship.

When there’s a person, there’s a problem. When there’s no person, there’s no problem.

I am a Communist, a convinced Communist! For some that may be a fantasy. But to me it is my main goal.

Liberty is not merely one particular value…it is the source and condition of most moral values. What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.

Thousands of mercenaries, who have trained in camps on the territory of Chechnya as well as come in from abroad, are actually preparing to impose extremist ideas on the whole world.

Fascism is a caricature of Jacobinism.

Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 [Hillary Clinton] emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.

Great Britain provided time; the United States provided money and Soviet Russia provided blood.

I was at the Battle of Britain memorial yesterday. I was there out of respect for that amazing moment in British history. I was also thinking about my family, my mum and dad who were there at that time in London, and worked as air raid wardens during the Blitz, and I was thinking about that. It was a respectful ceremony, and I stood in respect throughout it. […] The issue is that we had a memorial for the Battle of Britain, I was there, I showed respect for it, and I’ll show respect in the proper way at all future events.

The Pentagon is in no sense a defense department. It has never defended the United States from anyone. It has only served to conduct aggression. And I think that the American people would be much better off without a Pentagon.

The business classes are very class-conscious-they’re constantly fighting a bitter class war to improve their power and diminish opposition. Occasionally this is recognized.