Noam Chomsky

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.

Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.

Europe has not been a heterogenous society to anything like the extent that the United States has. Nor has it been as mobile a society as the United States. These matters have been a bit under the cover, but they’re harder to keep under the cover.

Why did the U.S. decide to normalize relations with Cuba?…Not a magnanimous gesture of courage to bring Cuba-to protect Cuba from its isolation, to save them from their isolation; quite the opposite, it was to save the U.S. from its isolation with the rest of the world.

I would prefer to think of anarchism as the libertarian left, and from that point of view anarchism can be conceived as a kind of voluntary socialism, that is, as libertarian socialist or anarcho-syndicalist or communist anarchist [Bakunin, Kropotkin and others.]

There’s an array of terms of abuse [in the U.S.], like “Marxist,” but it doesn’t matter really, it’s a very free society. So if you’re vilified by some commissars, who cares, you go on-you do your work anyway.

We’re going to build a wall and Mexico is going to pay. And the reason they’re going to pay and the way they’re going to pay, Bob, is this. We have a trade deficit now with Mexico of $58 billion a year. The wall is going to cost $10 billion a year. That’s what it’s going to cost. It’s going to be a powerful wall. It’s going to cost $10 billion.

Ample work in mainstream political science shows that a majority of voters are not represented by their own elected representatives, who listen to different voices – the voices of the donor class, great wealth and the corporate sector.

You cannot put Russia down on its knees and hold it there because Russia will ultimately pull out.

In any country there must be people who have to die. They are the Sacrifices any nation has to make to achieve law and order.

Let’s not turn this into blaming people who travel, work and migrate around Europe, let’s instead ensure governments respond to the needs of all communities and that unscrupulous employers that are grossly exploiting migrant workers and trying to limit their rights need to be dealt with.

It is better to discuss things, to argue and engage in polemics than make perfidious plans of mutual destruction.

Quantity has a quality all its own.

Armies are not only for offensives.

If we do not believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we do not believe in it at all.

I have been very happy in the House of Representatives.

I believe that government is the servant of the people and not their master.

If a young man wants to fit himself for the Politics of tomorrow, let him fit himself into essential industry for the purpose of learning how best to conduct it for the whole public good.

Every day, you have the power to choose our better history – by opening your hearts and minds, by speaking up for what you know is right.

It is clear to us that we have to defend our interests, and to do so consistently, not boorishly or rudely, in both the sphere of the economy and of defense.

That diploma you hold in your hands today is really just your learner’s permit for the rest of the drive through life. Remember, you don’t have to be smarter than the next person, all you have to do is be willing to work harder than the next person.