Noam Chomsky

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.

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 number of people killed by the sanctions in Iraq is greater than the total number of people killed by all weapons of mass destruction in all of history.

As a research tool, the internet is invaluable.

..people would like to think there’s somebody up there who knows what he’s doing. Since we don’t participate, we don’t control and we don’t even think about the questions of crucial importance, we hope somebody is paying attention who has some competence. Let’s hope the ship has a captain, in other words, since we’re not taking in deciding what’s going on. I think that’s a factor. But also, it is an important feature of the ideological system to impose on people the feeling that they are incompetent to deal with these complex and important issues; they’d better leave it to the captain. One device is to develop a star system, an array of figures who are often media creations or creations of the academic propaganda establishment, whose deep insights we are supposed to admire and to whom we must happily and confidently assign the right to control our lives and control international affairs.

…there is definitely a sector of the population that considers themselves threatened by big forces, ranging from the Federal Reserve to the Council on Foreign Relations to big government to who knows what and are calling for guns to protect themselves.

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

It’s not that India was a peaceful place before — it wasn’t. Nor was the western hemisphere a pacifist utopia. But there’s no doubt that almost everywhere the Europeans went they raised the level of violence to a significant degree.

So the growth of corporate propaganda in the United States more or less parallels the growth of democracy, for quite straightforward reasons. It’s not any kind of secret. It is discussed very frankly and openly in business literature and academic social-science journals.

He told me was seeking contributions to the Jimmy Carter Library. I asked how much he had in mind. And he said, Donald, I would be very appreciative if you contributed five million dollars.I was dumbfounded. I didn’t even answer him.But that experience also taught me something.Until then, I’d never understood how Jimmy Carter became president. The answer is that as poorly qualified he was for the job, Jimmy Carter had the nerve, the guts, the balls, to ask for something extraordinary. That ability above all helped him get elected president.

CO2 is the exhaling breath of our civilization, literally. … Changing that pattern requires a scope, a scale, a speed of change that is beyond what we have done in the past.

I prefer to be in the grave in Colombia than in a jail cell in the United States.

[The Americans] should accept their part of the blame. Let them say so. We talked to them all the time, we were telling them that we want Afghanistan to be an independent country, that we are leaving, we are withdrawing from that country. But at that same time, our partners were working in secret with those forces with whom they are now fighting. It’s called the historical and political boomerang. I think God has some mechanism that he uses to punish those that make mistakes.

There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.

The new nationality law declares Israel to be the nation-state of the Jewish people, downgrades the status of Arabic and formally authorizes Jewish-only communities….What is new is primarily the elevation of these racist principles to the Basic Law – constitutional status.

The point [of the PR industry] is to undermine markets by projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information-and similarly, to undermine democracy by the same method.

We Marxists believe that revolution will occur in other countries, as well. But it will occur at a time when it will be considered possible or necessary by revolutionaries of those countries.

…social spending may well arouse public interest and participation, thus enhancing the threat of democracy; the public cares about hospitals, roads, neighborhoods, and so on, but has no opinion about the choice of missiles and high-tech fighter planes.

The Red Army and Navy and the whole Soviet people must fight for every inch of Soviet soil, fight to the last drop of blood for our towns and villages…onward, to victory!

To cite the facts of history is to fall prey to ‘moral equivalence,’ or ‘political correctness,’ or ‘the error of of atheism,’ or one of the other misdeeds concocted to guard against the sins of understanding and insight into the real world.

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.