Noam Chomsky

In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future.

If I were in a swing state, a state that matters, and the choice were Clinton or Trump, I would vote against Trump. And by arithmetic that means hold your nose and vote for Clinton.

In a three-minute stretch between commercials, or in seven hundred words, it is impossible to present unfamiliar thoughts or surprising conclusions with the argument and evidence required to afford them some credibility. Regurgitation of welcome pieties faces no such problem.

The big transnationals want to reduce freedom by undermining the democratic functioning of the states in which they’re based, while at the same time ensuring the government will be powerful enough to protect and support them.

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 is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.

I am never guided by a possible assessment of my work.

No honest journalist should be willing to describe himself or herself as ’embedded.’ To say, ‘I’m an embedded journalist’ is to say, ‘I’m a government Propagandist.

What is called ‘capitalism’ is basically a system of corporate mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy, political systems, and social and cultural life, operating in close co-operation with powerful states…

The Revolution… was the result of a mature and reflecting preference for freedom, and not of a vague or ill-defined craving for independence.

What is a uni-polar world? No matter how we beautify this term, it means one single centre of power, one single centre of force and one single master.

My first four jobs were minimum wage or close to it.

The business world was pretty upset by the advances in public welfare in the ’60s, in particular by Richard Nixon – it’s not too well understood, but he was the last New Deal president, and they regarded that as class treachery.

As in the past, the costs and risks of the coming phases of the industrial economy were to be socialized, with eventual profits privatized …

We need a great president.

We’re no longer in the Cold War. Eavesdropping on friends is unacceptable.

Our aims are absolutely clear: They are a high living standard in the country and a secure, free and comfortable life.

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

The social system is taking on a form in which finding out what you want to do is less and less of an option because your life is too structured, organised, controlled and disciplined.

And [Saudi Arabia] is strongly backed by the United States and its allies, Britain and France. Reason? It’s got a lot of oil. It’s got a lot of money. You can sell them a lot of arms, I think tens of billions of dollars of arms.

We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.