Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Noam Chomsky

410 quotes

“There's a good reason why nobody studies history. It just teaches you too much.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: KGNU benefit at the University of Colorado at Boulder, April 5, 2003 (context: João Goulart)
“Somebody's paying the corporations that destroyed Iraq and the corporations that are rebuilding it. They're getting paid by the American taxpayer in both cases. So we pay them to destroy the country, and then we pay them to rebuild it.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview by David Barsamian on Alternative Radio, September 11, 2003 .
“After September 11th I had tons of interviews everywhere, except the United States of course, and often it was national radio and TV. A couple of times it turned out to be Irish television and BBC back to back, and the difference in reaction was startling. If I said this much on Irish TV, OK, discussion over, everyone understands what I'm talking about. You try to say it on BBC, you have to go on for like about an hour to explain to them what you mean. The Irish sea is a chasm, and it just depends who's been holding the whip for 800 years and who's been under it for 800 years.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Noam Chomsky - Rebel Without a Pause, 2003
“Those who want to face their responsibilities with a genuine commitment to democracy and freedom - even to decent survival - should recognize the barriers that stand in the way. In violent states these are not concealed. In more democratic societies barriers are more subtle. While methods differ sharply from more brutal to more free societies, the goals are in many ways similar: to ensure that the "great beast," as Alexander Hamilton called the people, does not stray from its proper confines.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The final years of the millennium witnessed a display of exuberant self-adulation that may even have surpassed its no-too-glorious predecessors, with awed acclaim for an "idealistic new world bent on ending inhumanity," dedicated to "principles and values" for the first time in history. An era of enlightenment and benevolence was upon us, in which the civilized nations, led by the United States, then "at the height of its glory, " acted out of "altruism" and "moral fervor" in pursuit of exalted ideals.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The whole question of recognizing the right of a state to exist was invented solely for Israel. People, on the other hand, have a right to exist. So the people who live on the land - Israelis and Palestinians - have a right to live in security and peace.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview by Ahmed Nassef, April 29, 2004
“Clinton, Kennedy, they all carried out mass murder, but they didn't think that that was what they were doing - nor does Bush. You know, they were defending justice and democracy from greater evils. And in fact I think you'd find it hard to discover a mass murderer in history who didn't think that.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The invasion of Iraq was simply a war crime. Straight-out war crime.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's certainly true that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein, and also without the people who supported him through his worst atrocities, and are now telling us about them.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was very much involved in the resistance movement in the 1960's. In fact, I was just barely -- the only reason I missed a long jail sentence is because the Tet Offensive came along and the trials were called off.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The big debate in Washington is totally pointless. And the media, about whether Bush downgraded terror in order to invade Iraq. There's nothing to debate. He invaded Iraq. That proves beyond doubt that he downgraded the threat of terror in favor of invading Iraq. They anticipated, and their own intelligence agencies told them, and everyone else did too, that invasion of Iraq was likely to increase the threat of terror. It's not a high priority, so they invaded Iraq because that's much higher priority.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If there was anyone who actually fit the category of conservative, if there was such a category of people, they would have a very easy way to deal with the fact that 60% of the children under 2 [in Nicaragua] are suffering probable brain damage. Namely, by paying their debts. Simple conservative principle. But that's beyond unthinkable. Compassionate conservatives might want to go beyond that, if they existed. But they're much more interested in making political capital over the fact that a woman in a vegetative state shouldn't be allowed to die in dignity.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Talk at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, March 22, 2005 .
“There's basically two principles that define the Bush Administration policies: stuff the pockets of your rich friends with dollars, and increase your control over the world. Almost everything follows from that. If you happen to blow up the world, well, you know, it's somebody else's business. Stuff happens, as Rumsfeld said.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview by Geov Parrish, December 23, 2005 .
“I think murdering Iraqi union leaders is criminal, for example. And a lot of what the insurgents have done is criminal. But, you know, you rank the priorities. Our priority is to stop major war crimes, like Fallujah for example. So yeah, what the resistance is doing, one can also criticize, harshly in fact. But in any kind of ranking, even if we're on Mars, and certainly if we're in the United States, what is vastly more important is our own crimes, which are much worse, and they're ours.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Say, take Rachel Corrie, local young woman, she was extremely courageous. She's a martyr for peace and justice. We happened to kill her too, even if we don't like to admit it. She was killed by U.S. sent equipment, which is Caterpillar... [Q: you draw that line right back to you and me sitting here?] Absolutely, we're responsible for it. I mean, we didn't drive the bulldozer, but why is it there? What's it doing? Who provides the military, economic, and diplomatic support for destroying the occupied territories?”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Bush Administration do have moral values. Their moral values are very explicit: shine the boots of the rich and the powerful, kick everybody else in the face, and let your grandchildren pay for it. That simple principle predicts almost everything that's happening.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...the argument is that by bombing at a time when most of the atrocities were attributed to the KLA guerrillas, with the anticipation that the bombing would lead to far worse atrocities, NATO was preventing atrocities. The fact that this is the strongest argument that can be contrived by serious analysts, and I stress serious because there's plenty of nonsense, that tells us a good deal about the decision to bomb, particularly when we recall that there apparently were diplomatic options.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jesus himself, and most of the message of the Gospels, is a message of service to the poor, a critique of the rich and the powerful, and a pacifist doctrine. And it remained that way, that's what Christianity was up ... until Constantine. Constantine shifted it so the cross, which was the symbol of persecution of somebody working for the poor, was put on the shield of the Roman Empire. It became the symbol for violence and oppression, and that's pretty much what the church has been until the present.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Virtually all informed observers agree that a fair and equitable resolution of the plight of the Palestinians would considerably weaken the anger and hatred of Israel and the US in the Arab and Muslim worlds – and far beyond, as international polls reveal. Such an agreement is surely within reach, if the US and Israel depart from their long-standing rejectionism.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview by Merav Yudilovitch in Yedioth Ahronoth, August 4, 2006 .
“The Report calls for direct talks for Palestinians who "accept Israel's right to exist" (an absurd demand) but does not restrict Israelis to those who accept the right of a Palestinian state to exist, which would, for example, exclude Israel's Prime Minister Olmert, who received a rousing ovation in Congress when he declared that Israel's historic right to the land from Jordan to the sea is beyond question.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview by Kaveh L. Afrasiabi, December 26, 2006
“China is the center of the Asian energy security grid, which includes the Central Asian states and Russia. India is also hovering around the edge, South Korea is involved, and Iran is an associate member of some kind. If the Middle East oil resources around the Gulf, which are the main ones in the world, if they link up to the Asian grid, the United States is really a second-rate power. A lot is at stake in not withdrawing from Iraq.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview by Michael Shank in Foreign Policy In Focus, February 16, 2007
“Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories", August 2007, ISBN: 978-1-59451-307-7. Review by Chomsky: Even those who are familiar with the grim reality of the occupied territories will quickly be drawn into a world they had barely imagined by these vivid, searingly honest, intensely acute portrayals.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In "Witness in Palestine" by Anna Baltzer , 2007.
“Mass non-violent protest is predicated on the humanity of the oppressor. Quite often it doesn't work. Sometimes it does, in unexpected ways. But judgements about that would have to be based on intimate knowledge of the society and its various strands.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What’s so exciting about at last visiting Venezuela is that I can see how a better world is being created.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Meeting with Hugo Chavez , 2009.
“We're supposed to worship Adam Smith but you're not supposed to read him. That's too dangerous. He's a dangerous radical.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Talk at (April 2010)
“It is not that I am not a fan of American exceptionalism. That is like saying I am not a fan of the moon being made out of green cheese—it does not exist. Powerful states have quite typically considered themselves to be exceptionally magnificent, and the United States is no exception to that. The basis for it ["it" meaning American exceptionalism] is not very substantial to put it politely. The problems with American foreign policy are rooted in its central nature, which we know about or can know about if we want to.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with The Young Turks, October 26, 2010
“Dayan's correct assumption was that the boss in Washington might object formally, but with a wink, and would continue to provide the decisive military, economic and diplomatic support for the criminal endeavors. The criminality has been underscored by repeated Security Council resolutions, more recently by the International Court of Justice, with the basic agreement of U.S. Justice Thomas Buergenthal in a separate declaration. Israel's actions also violate U.N. Security Council resolutions concerning Jerusalem. But everything is fine as long as Washington winks.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Article The Charade of Israeli-Palestinian Talks for Truthout newsletter, December 6, 2010 .
“There is a history of Christianity: the first three centuries of Christianity, it was a radical pacifist religion, which is why it was persecuted. It was the religion of the poor and the suffering, and Jesus was the symbol of the poor and the suffering. ...”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t even know what an atheist is. When people ask me if I’m an atheist, I have to ask them what they mean. What is it that I’m supposed to not believe in? Until you can answer that question I can’t tell you whether I’m an atheist, and the question doesn’t arise. [...] I don’t see how one can be an agnostic when one doesn’t know what it is that one is supposed to believe in, or reject.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Science in the Dock (2011),
“Science talks about very simple things, and asks hard questions about them. As soon as things become too complex, science can't deal with them... But it's a complicated matter: Science studies what's at the edge of understanding, and what's at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are way too complicated. In fact even understanding insects is an extremely complicated problem in the sciences. So the actual sciences tell us virtually nothing about human affairs.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Science in the Dock, Discussion with Noam Chomsky, Lawrence Krauss & Sean M. Carroll (2011),
“We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Noam Chomsky: My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death", Guernica, 6 May 2011.
“[ZEIT Campus: Political engagement like yours is rare among scholars. Are you sometimes furious at the “servants of power” as you say or at professor colleagues who only concentrate on their academic work?] Chomsky: I consider it immoral to be a supporter of a power system. However that does not mean that I am furious at anyone. Scholars per se do not have deeper political insights than other persons and are not morally superior to others. But they are obligated to help politicians seek and find the truth.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The United States effectively has a one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Voters should consider them, but without illusions about the political parties, and with the recognition that consistenly over the centuries, progressive legislation and social welfare have been won by popular struggles, not gifts from above.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some kind of settlement in Kashmir is crucial for both India and Pakistan. It's also tearing India apart with horrible atrocities in the region which is controlled by Indian armed forces. This is feeding right back into society even in the domain of elementary civil rights.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in "Exclusive interview with Noam Chomsky on Pakistan elections", Dawn, May 7, 2013.
“Obama's now conducting the world's greatest international terrorist campaign – the drones and special forces campaign. It's also a terror-generating campaign. The common understanding at the highest level [is] that these actions generate potential terrorists. I'll quote General Stanley McChrystal, Petraeus' predecessor. He says that "for every innocent person you kill", and there are plenty of them, "you create ten new enemies".”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I mentioned the Magna Carta. That's the foundations of modern law. We will soon be commemorating the 800th anniversary. We won't be celebrating it – more likely interring what little is left of its bones after the flesh has been picked off by Bush and Obama and their colleagues in Europe.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the interesting WikiLeaks exposures was from Anne W. Patterson, the American ambassador in Pakistan, who supports U.S. policy in Pakistan but pointed out that it carries with it the danger of "destabilizing the Pakistani state," maybe even leading to a coup, which could bring about the leaking of radioactive materials into the jihadi network.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“WikiLeaks ... compromised the security that governments are usually concerned about: their security from inspection by their own populations. (p. 109)”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The general question of nuclear power is not a simple one. It is hardly necessary to stress how dangerous it is after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which has far from ended. Continued use of fossil fuels threatens global disaster, and not in the distant future. The sensible course would be to move as quickly as possible to sustainable energy sources, as Germany is now doing. The alternatives are too disastrous to contemplate.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As I said, there is some merit in these views [that nuclear power is the "only way to save the planet from cooking"]. More accurately, there would be if limited and short-term reliance on nuclear energy, with all of its extreme hazards and unsolved problems — like waste disposal — was taken as an opportunity for rapid and extensive development of sustainable energy. That should be the highest priority, and very quickly, because severe threats of environmental catastrophe are not remote.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ferguson and Baltimore is a statistical clustering of things that go on all the time. It’s misleading to put them together […] It’s nothing new. In fact, it goes back 400 years. The first slaves came here in 1620 roughly. It’s 400 years, very little has changed since, fundamentally. Of course, the nature of the oppression has changed dramatically.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I was in the mainstream, I'd began to ask myself what I'm doing wrong.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m not an absolute pacifist. I think there are times when the use of military force is defensible […] Defending the Kurds against the ISIL attacks—yes, that’s legitimate.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Noam Chomsky, Al Jazeera ‘UpFront’ interview with host Mehdi Hasan on ISIL, Turkey and Ukraine, (Jan 23, 2016)
“Imperialism has a meaning. When the United States supports Saudi Arabia, it’s not imperialism, even though it’s supporting a brutal and harsh government. When the United States supports Israel, it’s not imperialism, even though it’s carrying out atrocities. When Russia supports Damascus, it’s not imperialism. [when asked whether “sections of the left” were “guilty of only resisting US imperialism, but not Russian imperialism in the Middle East, in Ukraine, and elsewhere”]”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Noam Chomsky, Al Jazeera ‘UpFront’ interview with host Mehdi Hasan on ISIL, Turkey and Ukraine, (Jan 23, 2016)
“Annexing of the land in Crimea, I think, was a criminal act. But it has a history.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Noam Chomsky, Al Jazeera ‘UpFront’ interview with host Mehdi Hasan on ISIL, Turkey and Ukraine, (Jan 23, 2016)
“There’s very little evidence. He’s not a nice guy, I don’t want to have dinner with him. [when asked whether Russian President Vladimir Putin has an “expansionist view” of “recreating a strong, Soviet-style Russia”]”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Noam Chomsky, Al Jazeera ‘UpFront’ interview with host Mehdi Hasan on ISIL, Turkey and Ukraine (Jan 23, 2016)
“Incidentally, I don't say it [the US electoral system] is a charade; there are differences in the parties—I don't think they're great differences, but they're real, and small differences in a system of great power can have enormous consequences.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Noam Chomsky, Al Jazeera ‘UpFront’ interview with host Mehdi Hasan concerning the 2016 US Presidential Election, (Jan 30, 2016)
“If the population allows it to proceed, it's just going to go on and on like this. Until the next crash — which is so much expected that credit agencies, which evaluate the status of firms, are now counting into their calculations the taxpayer bailout that they expect to come after the next crash... Everywhere you look, policies are designed this way, which should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone. That's what happens when you put power into the hands of a narrow sector of wealth, which is dedicated to increasing power for itself — just as you'd expect.”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted by Bill Moyers in In His New Book, Noam Chomsky Takes a Look at Income Inequality, (11 May 2017)
“The Native population (in the US) suffered a migrant crisis of an incredible kind ... where the immigrants come in with the intention of exterminating and expelling the population... Should they institute war crimes trials...? It would not make a lot of sense. It would make a lot of sense to bring out understanding of what happened, to call for reparations and so on, but not war crimes trials. It just means nothing in these circumstances. Is it genocide? ... The Western hemisphere had about 80 million people when Columbus arrived, and pretty soon about 90 percent of them were gone (killed).”
Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Noam Chomsky: How the US “Politically Vulgarizes” Genocide and War Crimes, by Pitasanna Shanmugathas, Truthout (27 November 2018)