Noam Chomsky

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.

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.

That just fires up his worshipful base, providing more evidence that the hated liberal elites are trying to destroy the one guy in the political arena who is dedicated to defending the common folk – who he is shafting, with delight, at every opportunity.

According to polls released by the Brookings Institution in August [2011], some Arabs agree with Washington and western commentators that Iran is a threat: 10%. In contrast, they regard the US and Israel as the major threats (77%; 88%).

That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.

What we call intellectuals, they didn’t used to call them that, it’s a modern term. Historically, what you find is overwhelmingly this group is supportive of power. There’s usually a fringe of dissidents who are treated pretty badly.

Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

International terrorism is throwing down a challenge, and not just to Russia.

The U.S. government played a significant role [in the 1965 Indonesian genocide] by supplying the names of thousands of Communist Party leaders to the Indonesian army, which hunted down the leftists and killed them, former U.S. diplomats say…

Democracy must learn to defend itself.

Construction of the first gas pipeline system was started during the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, and for all those years, from the 1960s until this day, Russia has been fulfilling its contract obligations in a very consistent and reliable way, regardless of the political situation.

The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, ‘We’re sorry we did it,’ that would be nice. But if that just assuages guilt, it’s just another crime. To become minimally civilized, we would have to say, ‘We carried out and benefited from vicious crimes. A large part of the wealth of France comes from the crimes we committed against Haiti, and the United States gained as well. Therefore we are going to pay reparations to the Haitian people.’ Then you will see the beginnings of civilization.

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.

Iraq is a small but very proud nation.

I read papers, try to watch news programs on television, but, as a rule, recorded. During the day I have no time for that, so I watch something taped. As for the newspapers, I try to get through them every day. Additionally, of course, I look through news bulletins.

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.

There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‘That person I see is a savage monster;’ instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.

In the execution of Presidential decisions work to be true to his views, in fact and tone.

The centuries-old history and culture of India, majestic architectural monuments and museums of Delhi, Agra and Mumbai have a unique attractive force.

The centerpiece of [Trump’s] press conference with Putin, bitterly condemned by elite opinion, was his effort to discredit Mueller. The tactic is succeeding quite well…polls show that Mueller’s public image is at an all-time low.

I feel a lot of people listen to what I have to say.