Noam Chomsky

To cite the facts of history is to fall prey to ‘moral equivalence,’ or ‘political correctness,’ or ‘the error of of atheism,’ or one of the other misdeeds concocted to guard against the sins of understanding and insight into the real world.

Mark Twain has wonderful anti-imperialist essays. But you don’t find reference to them. I think the first general publication of them was in a book, Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire, edited by Jim Zwick about 10 years ago.

In a Canadian-style insurance system, the costs are distributed in the same way that taxes are. If the tax system is progressive…then the wealthy will also pay more of the costs of health care.

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.

Our ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries. When we face a problem, we may not know its solution, but we have insight, increasing knowledge, and an inkling of what we are looking for. When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare in wonder and bewilderment, not knowing what an explanation would even look like.

Take, say, the NYT or the Washington Post. They have dual functions and they’re contradictory. One function is to subdue the great beast. But another function is to let their audience, which is an elite audience, gain a tolerably realistic picture of what’s going on in the world.

CO2 is the exhaling breath of our civilization, literally. … Changing that pattern requires a scope, a scale, a speed of change that is beyond what we have done in the past.

I’m a conservative, but I’m not a nut about it.

Our ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries. When we face a problem, we may not know its solution, but we have insight, increasing knowledge, and an inkling of what we are looking for. When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare in wonder and bewilderment, not knowing what an explanation would even look like.

Nobody and nothing will stop Russia on the road to strengthening democracy and ensuring human rights and freedoms.

Sometimes – history needs a push.

I’d be the world’s worst drinker!

Deep Throat’s information, and in my view, courage, allowed the newspaper to use what he knew and suspected.

To confront power is costly and difficult; high standards of evidence and argument are imposed, and critical analysis is naturally not welcomed by those who are in a position to react vigorously and to determine the array of rewards and punishments.

Certain people in the United States are driving nails into this structure of our relationship, then cutting off the heads. So the Soviets must use their teeth to pull them out.

We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.

I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.

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

The common good is the aspiration of all of us.

Capital punishment is a crime. I agree with Amnesty International on that one, and indeed with most of the world. The state should have no right to take people’s lives.

Peace is preferable to war. But it’s not an absolute value, and so we always ask, ‘What kind of peace?’