Noam Chomsky

The Institute of Defense Analysis…has been working on crowd control, which means control of blacks, students, peace demonstrators. And the technology for doing this is extremely efficacious and will only improve. So that’s one reason for nonviolence.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

The real mass media are basically trying to divert people. Let them do something else, but don’t bother us (us being the people who run the show)…Let everybody be crazed about professional sports or sex scandals or the personalities and their problems or something like that.

To cite the facts of history is to fall prey to ‘moral equivalence,’ or ‘political correctness,’ or ‘the error of of atheism,’ or one of the other misdeeds concocted to guard against the sins of understanding and insight into the real world.

Since Jimmy Carter, religious fundamentalists play a major role in elections. He was the first president who made a point of exhibiting himself as a born again Christian. That sparked a little light in the minds of political campaign managers: Pretend to be a religious fanatic and you can pick up a third of the vote right away. Nobody asked whether Lyndon Johnson went to church every day. Bill Clinton is probably about as religious as I am, meaning zero, but his managers made a point of making sure that every Sunday morning he was in the Baptist church singing hymns.

One fundamental goal of any well-crafted indoctrination program is to direct attention elsewhere, away from effective power, its roots, and the disguises it assumes.

If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.

Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.

Where in the world have you seen construction people who do everything on time, with good quality and at minimal prices? Just give me one country like that. A country like that doesn’t exist in the world, you know. There’s not one such country anywhere in the world.

A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production and the wage slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.

President Obama hasn’t been elected by the American people in order to be pleasant to Russia.

You cannot be President of the United States if you don’t have faith. Remember Lincoln, going to his knees in times of trial in the Civil War and all that stuff.

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.

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this.

We desire to give the Soviet people absolute liberty of voting for those they desire to elect, those whom they trust to ensure their interests.

This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.

If governments would only understand that if people are left alone they’ll work out their own salvation.

This is a sad negative element of the U.S. political system. One can argue, but one should not show disrespect, not even to him personally, but also to the people who voted for him.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Pick the topic you like: the Middle East, international terrorism, Central America, whatever it is, the picture of the world that’s presented to the public has only the remotest relation to reality. The truth of the matter is buried under edifice after edifice of lies upon lies. It’s all been a marvelous success from the point of view in deterring the threat of democracy, achieved under conditions of freedom, which is extremely interesting. It’s not like a totalitarian state, where it’s done by force. These achievements are under conditions of freedom.

I’ve been in the Labour Party all my life. I am a socialist. I am determined to see a fairer and more equal society.