Noam Chomsky

Social Security is actually in pretty good shape despite what everybody screams about. But if you can defund it, it won’t be in good shape. And there is a standard technique of privatization, namely defund what you want to privatize.

The official mission of NATO was changed to become to be-to control and safeguard the global energy system, sea lanes, pipelines and so on. And, of course, on the side, it’s acting as an intervention force for the United States.

The American Petroleum Institute, backed by the Chamber of Commerce and the other business lobbies, has intensified its efforts to persuade the public to dismiss concerns about anthropogenic global warming – with considerable success, as polls indicate.

So the indigenous population of what’s now the United States was ‘exterminated’, to use the word that the founding fathers used. Not totally, but that was what was considered the right thing to do. They replaced them and it became a kind of settler state, not an imperial state.

I like the cold weather. It means you get work done.

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.

In fact, the belief that neurophysiology is even relevant to the functioning of the mind is just hypothesis. Who knows if we’re looking at the right aspects of the brain at all. Maybe there are other aspects of the brain that nobody has even dreamt of looking at yet. That’s often happened in the history of science. When people say that the mental is the neurophysiological at a higher level, they’re being radically unscientific. We know a lot about the mental from a scientific point of view. We have explanatory theories that account for a lot of things. The belief that neurophysiology is implicated in these things could be true, but we have every little evidence for it. So, it’s just a kind of hope; look around and you see neurons; maybe they’re implicated.

To those who oppose us, we say, ‘Strike the woman, and you strike the rock.’

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.

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.

We all have an equal interest in stability and security throughout Europe. The years the OSCE has existed, and particularly this year, have given rise to great expectations and at the same time to powerful disappointments.

So, the role of the Central Bank in Europe…is very reactionary. In fact, even American conservatives criticize them, as granting far too much authority to a wholly undemocratic institution; it’s just not answerable to the public.

We don’t say that three-year-olds are lying if they say they saw a dragon outside, or an actor in a play. It’s also not clear that it’s tactically useful to tot up the random falsehoods that pepper [Trump’s] tweets and orations.

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

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.

History will point out some of the things I did wrong and some of the things I did right.

The United States and Russian security services regularly exchange information.

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

Patrick Cockburn…has correctly pointed out that what he calls the Wahhabisation of Sunni Islam, the spread of Saudi extremist Wahhabi doctrine over Sunni Islam, the Sunni world, is one of the real disasters of modern-of the modern era.

[on Trump] The winning candidate, now the president-elect, calls for rapid increase in use of fossil fuels, including coal; dismantling of regulations; rejection of help to developing countries that are seeking to move to sustainable energy; and in general, racing to the cliff as fast as possible.

I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.