Noam Chomsky

I don’t see why it’s more violent for a person to go into a store and take what’s there than it is for a person who has money that was achieved by violent methods to go into the store and take what’s there by handing over the money.

The social system is taking on a form in which finding out what you want to do is less and less of an option because your life is too structured, organised, controlled and disciplined.

The documents of Japanese fascists are just overflowing with loving kindness…when they were carrying out huge massacres in China they were bringing an “earthly paradise” to China and protecting the people from the ‘bandits’ who were trying to undermine it and so on and so forth.

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.

Case by case, we find that conformity is the easy way, and the path to privilege and prestige; dissidence carries personal costs that may be severe, even in a society that lacks such means of control as death squads, psychiatric prisons, or extermination camps.

Like most technology, the internet has mixed effects. It’s a neutral instrument.

The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

…if you want to be praised and have your books reviewed and told how brilliant you are and get great jobs, it’s not advisable to be a dissident. It’s not impossible, and in fact the system has enough looseness in it so that it can be done, but it is not easy.

You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.

The war against working people should be understood to be a real war…. Specifically in the U.S., which happens to have a highly class-conscious business class…. And they have long seen themselves as fighting a bitter class war, except they don’t want anybody else to know about it.

There are numerous bugbears in the profession of a politician. First, ordinary life suffers. Second, there are many temptations to ruin you and those around you. And I suppose third, and this is rarely discussed, people at the top generally have no friends.

The market came with the dawn of civilization and it is not an invention of capitalism. … If it leads to improving the well-being of the people there is no contradiction with socialism.

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

Scholars per se do not have deeper political insights than other persons and are not morally superior to others. But they are obligated to help politicians seek and find the truth.

Under my administration anyone who illegally crosses the border will be detained until they are removed out of our country and back to the country from which they came.

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.

Iraq is a small but very proud nation.

I believe that President Trump of the United States does not need any advice because one has to possess certain talent and go through this trial to be elected, even without having the experience of such big administrative work. He has done this.

It’s a very good question, very direct, and I’m not going to answer it.

There are still independent newspapers and magazines, they do exist. But as for television, the situation is not as good. It’s one of the main problems. I would say, as regards the development of democracy, of democracy laying down roots – that is something that Russia still needs to address.

My first four jobs were minimum wage or close to it.