Noam Chomsky

The Obama campaign greatly impressed the public relations industry, which named Obama ‘Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008,’ easily beating out Apple computers. A good predictor of the elections a few weeks later. The industry’s regular task is to create uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices, thus undermining markets as they are conceptualized in economic theory, but benefiting the masters of the economy. And it recognizes the benefits of undermining democracy in much the same way, creating uninformed voters who make often irrational choices between the factions of the business party that amass sufficient support from concentrated private capital to enter the electoral arena, then to dominate campaign propaganda.

The process of shaping opinion, attitudes, and perceptions was termed the ‘engineering of consent’ by one of the founders of the modern public relations industry, Edward Bernays.

The big transnationals want to reduce freedom by undermining the democratic functioning of the states in which they’re based, while at the same time ensuring the government will be powerful enough to protect and support them.

So, sit down strikes in the 1930’s, organization of women’s consciousness-raising groups in the ’60’s and ’70’s, anti-war activism. I mean, all of these things work. They have to be done of course. They don’t happen by themselves.

The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.

As the Cold War came to a definitive end, the Bush Administration created a Center for Defense Trade to stimulate arms sales while proposing government guarantees of up to $1 billion in loans for purchase of US arms.

The new crimes that the US and Israel were committing in Gaza as 2009 opened do not fit easily into any standard category-except for the category of familiarity.

The internet is an élite organization; most of the population of the world has never even made a phone call.

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.

[Governments are] …without exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.

In my position you have to read when you want to write and to talk when you would like to read.

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

This administration is extremely unpredictable. Trump probably has no idea what he’s going to do five minutes from now, so you can’t-literally-make predictions with much confidence.

Visit with your predecessors from previous Administrations. They know the ropes and can help you see around some corners. Try to make original mistakes, rather than needlessly repeating theirs.

America’s greatest strength has always been its hopeful vision of human progress.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

The Secretary of Defense is not a super General or Admiral. His task is to exercise civilian control over the Department for the Commander-in-Chief and the country.

In a three-minute stretch between commercials, or in seven hundred words, it is impossible to present unfamiliar thoughts or surprising conclusions with the argument and evidence required to afford them some credibility. Regurgitation of welcome pieties faces no such problem.

I cannot forgive him [Nelson Mandela] for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize with his jailer De Klerk. Hand in hand they went. Do you think De Klerk released him from the goodness of his heart? He had to. The times dictated it, the world had changed.

There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.

At the deepest level, the media contribute to the sense that the government is the enemy, and they suppress the sources of real power in the society, which lie in the totalitarian institutions-the corporations, now international in scale -that control the economy and much of our social life.