Noam Chomsky

It didn’t take very many forces to destroy huge numbers of natives, not so much because the technology was better, but because the Europeans fought differently. If we were to be honest about the history, we would describe European colonialism simply as a barbarian invasion.

Japan fended off the European invasions almost entirely. That’s why Japan is the one area of the Third World that developed. That’s striking. The one part of the Third World that wasn’t colonized is the one part that’s part of the industrialized world. That’s not by accident.

Edward Bernays’ first great achievement, that sort of made a star out of him, was a public relations campaign trying to get women to smoke. So he had models walking down Fifth Avenue smoking cigarettes and showing how it makes you beautiful and slim.

Anarchists try to identify power structures. They urge those exercising power to justify themselves. This justification does not succeed most of the time.

We also entered into what’s now called the sixth extinction, a rapid extinction of species, which is comparable to the fifth extinction 65 million years ago when an asteroid, huge asteroid, hit the Earth, we know.

A ‘rogue state’ is a state that defies international laws and conventions, does not consider itself bound by the major treaties and conventions, World Court decisions-in fact, anything except the interests of its own leadership, the forces around the leadership that dominate policy.

[on Jeremy Cobyn] It is a different type of Labour Party. Can it be taken back? I don’t know

…corporations are fundamentally illegitimate, …they don’t have to exist at all in their modern form. Just as other oppressive institutions – slavery, say, or royalty – have been changed or eliminated, so corporate power can be changed of eliminated.

I read papers, try to watch news programs on television, but, as a rule, recorded. During the day I have no time for that, so I watch something taped. As for the newspapers, I try to get through them every day. Additionally, of course, I look through news bulletins.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

Our country, our people, and our laws have to be our top priority.

The case for individual freedom rests largely upon the recognition of the inevitable and universal ignorance of all of us concerning a great many of the factors on which the achievements of our ends and welfare depend.

Don’t divide the world into “them” and “us.” Avoid infatuation with or resentment of the press, the Congress, rivals, or opponents. Accept them as facts. They have their jobs and you have yours.

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

I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me.

These are fashionable people who call themselves philosophers.

Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction.

The general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.

Both prisons and inner-city schools target a kind of superfluous population that there’s no point educating because there’s nothing for them to do. Because we’re a civilized people, we put them in prison, rather than sending death squads out to murder them.

Look at those hands, are they small hands? And, [Republican rival Marco Rubio] referred to my hands: ‘If they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.