Noam Chomsky

Quite apart from the superpower confrontation, the US was committed to restoring the traditional conservative order. To achieve this aim, it was necessary to destroy the anti-fascist resistance, often in favor of Nazi and fascist collaborators, to weaken…popular organizations.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

Education is really aimed at helping students get to the point where they can learn on their own because that is what you’re going to do during your life, not just absorb materials given to you by the outside, and repeat it.

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.

…when you look at a television ad, it is not trying to create an informed consumer who’s going to make a rational choice. The purpose is to delude and deceive by imagery — it’s transparent — meaning to ensure that uninformed consumers will make irrational choices.

Poor and suffering people do not have the luxury of indulging in fairy tales. Not uncommonly, their own experience gives them a grasp of realities that are well concealed by the intellectual culture.

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.

More socialism means more democracy, openness and collectivism in everyday life.

While President Bush likes to project an image of strength and courage, the real truth is that in the presence of his large financial contributors, he is a moral coward.

Don’t be obsessed with tactics but with purpose. Tactics have a half life.

[on Osama bin Laden’s death] no attempt whatsoever that I can see to arrest him and put him on trial, to go through that process.

The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.

[on Bill and Hillary Clinton] Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it’s troubling.

In the future, there will be fewer but better Russians.

Case by case, we find that conformity is the easy way, and the path to privilege and prestige; dissidence carries personal costs.

You can live within the institutions and work hard to change them.

I want every individual who has the potential and qualifications to succeed in higher education to be given the opportunity to participate, whatever their family background.

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

But you really have to think through the talk about nonviolence. Sure, everybody’s in favor of nonviolence rather than violence, but under what conditions and when? Is it an absolute principle?

KGB, collapsed. Of course it was incredibly difficult to go through this. After all, most of my life had been devoted to work in the agencies. But I had made my choice.

Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level – there’s a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I’m opposed to political fascism, I’m opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it’s pointless to talk about democracy.