Noam Chomsky

Much of the world must be astonished-if they are not collapsing in laughter-while watching the performances in high places and in media concerning Russian efforts to influence an American election, a familiar US government specialty as far back as we choose to trace the practice.

I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.

The general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.

It’s not that the US is trying to increase the use of drugs, it’s just the natural thing to do. If you were in a position where you had to hire thugs and gangsters to kill peasants and break strikes, and you had to do it with untraceable money, what would come to your mind?

Debt is a social and ideological construct, not a simple economic fact.

The financial industry, that means Goldman Sachs, if managed properly, will calculate the potential cost to itself if a loan goes bad, but not the impact on the financial system, which can be severe. This inherent deficiency of markets is well known.

If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

I hope that things will not come to provocations (during the soccer World Cup). If this happens I think it would have very serious consequences for the Ukrainian government in general.

As his vice president for eight years, I learned more from Ronald Reagan than from anyone I encountered in all my years of public life.

From the point of view of the policy makers, the long-term future of the country doesn’t matter so much. What matters is just those sectors of society that sustain concentrated privilege.

Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.

Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.

I am most anxious that in dealing with matters which every Member knows are extremely delicate matters, I should not use any phrase or expression which would cause offence to our friends and Allies on the Continent or across the Atlantic Ocean.

[on Trump] We can objectively see quite serious achievements even during his short time in office.

The blacks want always Democrats … You know it’s like the plan they did, to take the fathers out the home and put them on welfare … Does anybody know about that? That’s a Democratic plan.

Is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton?

Not only were [the British] able to break into China for the first time, but also the profits from opium supported the Raj, the costs of the British Navy, and provided very significant capital which fueled the industrial revolution in England.

I think Comey was the ringleader of this whole den of thieves. It’s a den of thieves.

As a musician, African American, guy out in Hollywood, all these different things, you know, everyone around me tried to pick my candidate for me, and then told me every time I said I liked Trump that I couldn’t say it out loud or my career would be over, or I’d get kicked out of the black community – because blacks, we’re supposed to have a monolithic thought, we can only be Democrats.

As a Zionist youth leader in the 1940’s, I was among those who called for a binational state in Mandatory Palestine. When a Jewish state was declared, I felt that it should have the rights of other states – no more, no less.