Noam Chomsky

Quite apart from the superpower confrontation, the US was committed to restoring the traditional conservative order. To achieve this aim, it was necessary to destroy the anti-fascist resistance, often in favor of Nazi and fascist collaborators, to weaken…popular organizations.

How it is we have so much information, but know so little?

When the interests of the privileged and powerful are the guiding commitment of both political factions, people who do not share these interests tend to stay home.

Poor and suffering people do not have the luxury of indulging in fairy tales. Not uncommonly, their own experience gives them a grasp of realities that are well concealed by the intellectual culture.

It’s not that the US is trying to increase the use of drugs, it’s just the natural thing to do. If you were in a position where you had to hire thugs and gangsters to kill peasants and break strikes, and you had to do it with untraceable money, what would come to your mind?

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.

Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military in your command, you can’t make snap decisions. You can’t have a thin skin or a tendency to lash out. You need to be steady and measured and well-informed.

The common good is the aspiration of all of us.

The more you can increase fear of drugs, crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all of the people.

Can you imagine what the outcry would be if Snoop Dogg, failing career and all, had aimed and fired the gun at President Obama? Jail time!

U.S. society doesn’t want to play the role of international policeman.

Individual liberty…demonstrate[s] that some manners of living are more successful than others.

No matter what you do – guns, no guns – it doesn’t matter. You have people that are mentally ill. And they’re gonna come through the cracks. And they’re going to do things that people will not even believe are possible.

I have a great relationship with Kim Jong Un. He gave us back our hostages. I didn’t pay $1.8 billion. I paid nothing. But it was very smart that he did it.

My own view is that the CIA is very much under the control of executive power….It often looks as though it’s undertaking initiatives on its own, but that’s because the executive wants to preserve deniability.

Anyone who doesn’t regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.

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.

If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Let us not forget that revolutions are accomplished through people, although they be nameless. Materialism does not ignore the feeling, thinking, and acting man, but explains him.

The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjuration of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security.

I think I’d be a better president because I was in combat.