Noam Chomsky

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?

The idea that workers are only interested in horse-racing [odds] is an absurdity that cannot withstand even a superficial look at labour history or the lively and independent working class press that flourished in many places, including the manufacturing towns of New England…

For example, a US corporation that has an outlet in Puerto Rico may decide to take its profits in Puerto Rico, because of tax rebates. It shifts its prices around, using what’s called “transfer pricing,” so it doesn’t seem to be making a profit here.

In some intellectual circles, it is considered naive or foolish to be guided by moral principles. About this form of idiocy, I will have nothing to say.

Plainly, such an approach does not exclude other ways of trying to comprehend the world. Someone committed to it (as I am) can consistently believe (as I do) that we learn much more of human interest about how people think and feel and act by reading novels or studying history than from all of naturalistic psychology, and perhaps always will; similarly, the arts may offer appreciation of the heavens to which astrophysics cannot aspire.

The Drug War is an effort to stimulate fear of dangerous people from who we have to protect ourselves. It is also, a direct form of control of what are called “dangerous classes,” those superfluous people who don’t really have a function contributing to profit-making and wealth.

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.

The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground.

One day we took each other by the hand and went for a walk in the evening. And we walked like that for our whole life.

In fact, only two groups are allowed to be class-conscious in the United States. One of them is the business community, which is rabidly class-conscious…The other group is the high planning sectors of the government.

Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.

It was sort of important for us not to deal with a specific policy change, or a specific sort of approach, but to deal with cultural change.

When the States already had nuclear weapons, and the Soviet Union was only building them, we got a significant amount of information through Soviet foreign intelligence channels.

The devastating punch we took on September 11th still reverberates throughout American society.

This debate is now about injustice and inequality. Two years ago, it would have been about benefits scroungers. We’ve changed the language and changed the mood. Labour is in good heart.

In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions.

Obviously these [white-guard] emigres enjoy the right of asylum existing also in the U.S. So far as we are concerned we would never tolerate a single terrorist in our territory regardless against whom he would contemplate his crimes. Apparently the right of asylum receives broader interpretation in the U.S.A. than in our country.

I think the journey for a politician goes from wanting to please all the people all the time, to a political leader that realises in the end his responsibility is to decide. And when he decides, he divides.

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

Our aims are absolutely clear: They are a high living standard in the country and a secure, free and comfortable life.

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.