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Noam Chomsky

410 quotes

“Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We can determine the adequacy of a linguistic theory by developing rigorously and precisely the form of grammar corresponding to the set of levels contained within this theory, and then investigating the possibility of constructing simple and revealing grammars of this form for natural languages.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Despite the undeniable interest and importance of semantic and statistical studies of language, they appear to have no direct relevance to the problem of determining or characterizing the set of grammatical utterances. I think that we are forced to conclude that grammar is autonomous and independent of meaning, and that probabilistic models give no particular insight into some of the basic problems of syntactic structure.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are many facts about language and linguistic behavior that require explanation beyond the fact that such and such a string (which no one may ever have produced) is or is not a sentence. It is reasonable to expect grammars to provide explanations for some of these facts.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't feel that they deserve a blanket condemnation at all. There are many things to object to in any society. But take China, modern China; one also finds many things that are really quite admirable. [...] There are even better examples than China. But I do think that China is an important example of a new society in which very interesting positive things happened at the local level, in which a good deal of the collectivization and communization was really based on mass participation and took place after a level of understanding had been reached in the peasantry that led to this next step.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Legitimacy of Violence as a Political Act? Noam Chomsky debates with Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag, et al." in New York, December 15, 1967; Republished at chomsky.info, accessed May 23, 2014.
“A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior" in Language, 35, No. 1 (1959), 26-58. Summation by Noam Chomsky: Rereading this review after eight years, I find little of substance that I would change if I were to write it today. I am not aware of any theoretical or experimental work that challenges its conclusions; nor, so far as I know, has there been any attempt to meet the criticisms that are raised in the review or to show that they are erroneous or ill-founded.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior," in Leon A. Jakobovits and Murray S. Miron (eds.), Readings in the Psychology of Language, Prentice-Hall, 1967, pp. 142-143.
“[...] it is conceivable that in some instances American occupation may have prevented bloodshed, as it is conceivable that converting the United States into a Chinese colony might end American racism. Imperialist apologetics will no doubt be with us as long as one nation has the power to control another.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Exchange on “The Responsibility of Intellectuals”, The New York Review of Books, April 20, 1967.
“A grammar of a language purports to be a description of the ideal speaker-hearer’s intrinsic competence. If the grammar is, furthermore, perfectly explicit—in other words, if it does not rely on the intelligence of the understanding reader but rather provides an explicit analysis of his contribution—we may (somewhat redundantly) call it a generative grammar.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The phonological component of a grammar determines the phonetic form of a sentence generated by the syntactic rules. That is, it relates a structure generated by the syntactic component to a phonetically represented signal. The semantic component determines the semantic interpretation of a sentence. That is, it relates a structure generated by the syntactic component to a certain semantic representation.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A linguistic theory must contain a definition of “grammar,” that is, a specification of the class of potential grammars. We may, correspondingly, say that a linguistic theory is descriptively adequate if it makes a descriptively adequate grammar available for each natural language.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In general, there is no doubt that a theory of language, regarded as a hypothesis about the innate “language-forming capacity” of humans, should concern itself with both substantive and formal universals. But whereas substantive universals have been the traditional concern of general linguistic theory, investigations of the abstract conditions that must be satisfied by any generative grammar have been undertaken only quite recently. They seem to offer extremely rich and varied possibilities for study in all aspects of grammar.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Finally, I should like to call attention, once again, to the fact that various modifications and extensions of these functional notions are possible, and that it is important to find empirical motivation for such improvements.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In general, the rules of stylistic reordering are very different from the grammatical transformations, which are much more deeply embedded in the grammatical system.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In any event, the questions we have touched on here have not yet been illuminated in any serious way by approaching them within the framework of any explicit grammatical theory. For the present, one can barely go beyond mere taxonomic arrangement of data. Whether these limitations are intrinsic, or whether a deeper analysis can succeed in unraveling some of these difficulties, remains an open question.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In summary, it is the diversity of human behavior, its appropriateness to new situations, and man's capacity to innovate – the creative aspect of language use providing the principal indication of this –that leads Descartes to attribute possession of mind to other humans, since he regards this capacity as beyond the limitations of any imaginable mechanism.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Modern linguistics has also failed to deal with the Cartesian observations regarding human language in any serious way.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The deep structure that expresses the meaning is common to all languages, so it is claimed, being a simple reflection of the forms of thought.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Cartesian linguistics was not concerned simply with descriptive grammar, in this sense, but rather with “grammaire générale,” that is, with the universal principles of language structure.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Despite these shortcomings, the insights into the organization of grammar that were achieved in Cartesian linguistics remain quite impressive, and a careful study of this work can hardly fail to prove rewarding to a linguist who approaches it without prejudice or preconceptions as to the a priori limitations on permitted linguistic investigation.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The central doctrine of Cartesian linguistics is that the general features of grammatical structure are common to all languages and reflect certain fundamental properties of the mind.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I read in the Times this morning an interview with Jeanette Rankin, who was the one member of Congress to vote against the declaration of war on December 8, 1941, to the accompaniment of a chorus of boos and hisses. Looking back, though, we can see that the Japanese had very real grievances, and that the United States had quite a significant share of responsibility in those grievances back in 1941. In fact, Japan had rather a more valid case than is customary to admit.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course, it was politically impossible after Pearl Harbor for the United States not to declare war; we know how very difficult it is to restrain from striking back, even when you do know that the guilt is distributed.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s clear, I believe, that the emphasis on the use of terror and violence in China was considerably less than in the Soviet Union and that the success was considerably greater in achieving a just society.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think one has to be rather cautious about accepting as absolute the alternatives peaceful stagnation and violent revolution. There’s also a possibility of spontaneous revolution that uses both violence and nonviolent tactics, that minimizes the use of terror except as necessary in defense.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In fact, as Descartes himself quite correctly observed, language is a species-specific human possession, and even at low levels of intelligence, at pathological levels, we find a command of language that is totally unattainable by an ape that may, in other respects, surpass a human imbecile in problem-solving ability and other adaptive behavior.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The principles of universal grammar provide a highly restrictive schema to which any human language must conform, as well as specific conditions determining how the grammar of any such language can be used. It is easy to imagine alternatives to the conditions that have been formulated (or those that are often tacitly assumed). These conditions have in the past generally escaped notice, and we know very little about them today.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The child must acquire a generative grammar of his language on the basis of a fairly restricted amount of evidence. To account for this achievement, we must postulate a sufficiently rich internal structure – a sufficiently restricted theory of universal grammar that constitutes his contribution to language acquisition.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To summarize, I doubt that linguistics can provide “a new technique” for analytic philosophy that will be of much significance, at least in its present state of development. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the study of language can clarify and in part substantiate certain conclusions about human knowledge that relate directly to classical issues in the philosophy of mind. It is in this domain, I suspect, that one can look forward to a really fruitful collaboration between linguistics and philosophy in coming years.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think that Muste's revolutionary pacifism was, and is, a profoundly important doctrine, both in the political analysis and moral conviction that it expresses. The circumstances of the anti-fascist war subjected it to the most severe of tests. Does it survive this test? When I began working on this article, I was not at all sure. I still feel quite ambivalent about the matter.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only rarely has the question been raised whether there was any justification for American victory in the Pacific war; and this issue, where faced at all, has been posed in the context of the cold war -- that is, was it wise to have removed a counterweight to growing Chinese power, soon to become "Communist" power?”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When we lament over the German conscience, we are demanding of them a display of self-hatred -- a good thing, no doubt. But for us the matter is infinitely more serious. It is not a matter of self-hatred regarding the sins of the past. Like the German Kaiser, we believe that everything must be put to fire and sword, so that the war will be more quickly finished -- and we act on this belief. Unlike the German Kaiser, our soul is not torn.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[…] it might be asked whether the left-wing critique of Leninist elitism can be applied, under very different conditions, to the liberal ideology of the intellectual elite that aspires to a dominant role in managing the welfare state.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“After decades of anti-Communist indoctrination, it is difficult to achieve a perspective that makes possible a serious evaluation of the extent to which Bolshevism and Western liberalism have been united in their opposition to popular revolution.”
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“The consistent anarchist, then, should be a socialist, but a socialist of a particular sort. He will not only oppose alienated and specialized labor and look forward to the appropriation of capital by the whole body of workers, but he will also insist that this appropriation be direct, not exercised by some elite force acting in the name of the proletariat.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Notes on Anarchism," in: Daniel Guérin Anarchism: From Theory to Practice (1970).
“It is the fundamental duty of the citizen to resist and to restrain the violence of the state. Those who choose to disregard this responsibility can justly be accused of complicity in war crimes, which is itself designated as ‘a crime under international law’ in the principles of the Charter of Nuremberg.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Noam Chomsky, in John Duffett International War Crimes Tribunal: Against the Crime of Silence: Proceedings. Simon and Schuster (1970). p. xxiv; Republished at Foreword in chomsky.info, accessed May 23, 2014.
“If we try to keep a sense of balance, the exposures of the past several months are analogous to the discovery that the directors of Murder, Inc. were also cheating on their income tax. Reprehensible, to be sure, but hardly the main point.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Watergate: A Skeptical View," New York Review of Books (September 20, 1973).
“In the American Jewish community, there is little willingness to face the fact that the Palestinian Arabs have suffered a monstrous historical injustice, whatever one may think of the competing claims. Until this is recognized, discussion of the Middle East crisis cannot even begin.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Peace in the Middle East? Reflections on Justice and Nationhood (1974), p. 54.
“Even today, as regards East Timor, where our brutal Indonesian satellite (authors of the 1965-1966 butcheries) have very possibly killed as many people as did the Khmer Rouge, there is a virtually complete blackout of information in the Free Press. This is a bloodbath carried out by a friendly power and is thus of little interest to our readers. It is a “benign bloodbath” in our terminology.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chomsky and Herman (1979), The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, p. 22.
“We will consider the facts about postwar Indochina insofar as they can be ascertained, but a major emphasis will be on the ways in which these facts have been interpreted, filtered, distorted or modified by the ideological institutions in the West.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chomsky and Herman (1979), After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, p. vii.
Also quoted by: Edward S. Herman
“When the facts are in, it may well turn out that the more extreme condemnations were in fact correct. But even if that turns out to be the case, it will in no way alter the conclusions we have reached on the central question addressed here: how the available facts were selected, modified, or sometimes invented to create a certain image offered to the general population. The answer to this question seems clear, and it is unaffected by whatever may be discovered about Cambodia in the future.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chomsky and Herman (1979), After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, p. 293.
Also quoted by: Edward S. Herman
“[...] As to negotiations [to end the Vietnam War], there is, in fact, very little to negotiate. Withdrawal of American troops must be a unilateral act, as the invasion of Vietnam by the American government was a unilateral act in the first place. Those who had been calling for ‘negotiations now’ were deluding themselves and others, just as those who now call for a cease-fire that will leave an American expeditionary force in Vietnam are not facing reality.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No rational person will approve of violence and terror, and in particular the terror of the post-revolutionary state that has fallen into the hands of a grim autocracy has more than once reached indescribable levels of savagery. At the same time, no person of understanding or humanity will too quickly condemn the violence that often occurs, when long subdued masses rise against their oppressors or take their first steps toward liberty and social reconstruction.”
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“Unfortunately, you can't vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place. The corporate executives and the corporation lawyers and so on who overwhelmingly staff the executive, assisted increasingly by a university based mandarin class, remain in power no matter whom you elect.”
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“The Cold War ideology and the international communist conspiracy function in an important way as essentially a propaganda device to mobilize support at a particular historical moment for this long-time imperial enterprise. In fact, I believe that this is probably the main function of the Cold War: it serves as a useful device for the managers of American society and their counterparts in the Soviet Union to control their own populations and their own respective imperial systems.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Roughly speaking, I think it's accurate to say that a corporate elite of managers and owners governs the economy and the political system as well, at least in very large measure. The people, so-called, do exercise an occasional choice among those who Marx once called "the rival factions and adventurers of the ruling class.”
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“I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system. State censorship is not necessary, or even very efficient, in comparison to the ideological controls exercised by systems that are more complex and more decentralized.”
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“[...] one must be cautious in assessing the political significance of the relative freedom from repression — at least for the privileged — in the United States. Exactly what does it mean, concretely?”
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“The record of atrocities in Cambodia is substantial and often gruesome, but it has by no means satisfied the requirements of Western propagandists, who must labor to shift the blame for the torment of Indochina to the victims of France and the United States. Consequently, there has been extensive fabrication of evidence, a tide that is not stemmed even by repeated exposure.”
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“If, indeed, the Cambodian regime was, as Lacouture believes, as monstrous as the Nazis at their worst, then his comment might be comprehensible, though it is worth noting that he has produced no evidence to support this judgment. But if a more appropriate comparison is, say, to France after liberation, where a minimum of 30-40,000 people were massacred within a few months with far less motive for revenge and under far less rigorous conditions than those left by the U.S. war in Cambodia, then perhaps a different judgment is in order.”
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“While all of the countries of Indochina have been subjected to endless denunciations in the West for their 'loathsome' qualities and unaccountable failure to find humane solutions to their problems, Cambodia was a particular target of abuse. In fact, it became virtually a matter of dogma in the West that the regime was the very incarnation of evil with no redeeming qualities, and that the handful of demonic creatures who had somehow taken over the country were systematically massacring and starving the population.”
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