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Noam Chomsky

410 quotes

• “Let us turn now to the most elementary principle of just war theory, universality. Those who cannot accept this principle should have the decency to keep silent about matters of right and wrong, or just war. If we can rise to this level, some obvious questions arise: for example, have Cuba and Nicaragua been entitled to set off bombs in Washington, New York, and Miami in self-defense against ongoing terrorist attack? Particularly so when the perpetrators are well known and act with complete impunity, sometimes in brazen defiance of the highest international authorities, so that the cases are far clearer than Afghanistan? If not, why not?”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Hegemony or Survival, 2003.

• “There is a new and highly regarded literary genre inquiring into the cultural defects that keep us from responding properly to the crimes of others. An interesting question no doubt, though by any reasonably standard it ranks well below a different one: Why do we persist in or crimes, either directly or through crucial support for murderous clients? It is constructive to ask how often, or how accurately, one finds reference to Turkey, Colombia, East Timor, and many contemporary literature on the flaws in our character. There is much self-congratulation about the new "ruling ideology" in the moral universe of the enlightened states, grounded in the principal that "all states have a responsibility, to protect their citizens' if their leaders are unable or unwilling to do so, they render their countries liable to military intervention = authorized by the Security Council or, failing that (as in the case of Kosovo), by individual countries in 'conscience-shocking situations'" Atrocities comparable to or much worse than anything charged to Milosevic in Kosovo before the NATO bombing were not "conscience-shocking" when responsibility traced back home, as it often did - and even when the crimes took place within, not just near, the borders of NATO.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Even if [9/11 conspiracy theories] were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares? It doesn't have any significance. It's a little bit like the huge energy that's put out on trying to figure out who killed John F. Kennedy. Who knows? And who cares? Plenty of people get killed all the time, why does it matter that one of them happened to be John F. Kennedy? If there was some reason to believe that there was a high level conspiracy, it might be interesting. But the evidence against that is just overwhelming. And after that, if it happened to be a jealous husband, or the mafia, or someone else, what difference does it make? It's just taking energy away from serious issues onto ones that don't matter. And I think the same is true here; it's my personal opinion.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Q&A at the Kossuth Club, in Budapest, Hungary, May 16, 2004 .

• “On May 27, the New York Times published one of the most incredible sentences I've ever seen. They ran an article about the Nixon-Kissinger interchanges. Kissinger fought very hard through the courts to try to prevent it, but the courts permitted it. You read through it, and you see the following statement embedded in it. Nixon at one point informs Kissinger, his right-hand Eichmann, that he wanted bombing of Cambodia. And Kissinger loyally transmits the order to the Pentagon to carry out "a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves." That is the most explicit call for what we call genocide when other people do it that I've ever seen in the historical record. Right at this moment there is a prosecution of Milošević going on in the international tribunal, and the prosecutors are kind of hampered because they can't find direct orders, or a direct connection even, linking Milošević to any atrocities on the ground. Suppose they found a statement like this. Suppose a document came out from Milošević saying, "Reduce Kosovo to rubble. Anything that flies on anything that moves." They would be overjoyed. The trial would be over. He would be sent away for multiple life sentences - if it was a U.S. trial, immediately the electric chair.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Interview by David Barsamian on Alternative Radio, June 11, 2004

• “I mean, what's the elections? You know, two guys, same background, wealth, political influence, went to the same elite university, joined the same secret society where you're trained to be a ruler - they both can run because they're financed by the same corporate institutions. At the Democratic Convention, Barack Obama said, 'only in this country, only in America, could someone like me appear here.' Well, in some other countries, people much poorer than him would not only talk at the convention - they'd be elected president. Take Lula. The president of Brazil is a guy with a peasant background, a union organizer, never went to school, he's the president of the second-biggest country in the hemisphere. Only in America? I mean, there they actually have elections where you can choose somebody from your own ranks. With different policies. That's inconceivable in the United States.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “You can find things in the traditional religions which are very benign and decent and wonderful and so on, but I mean, the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon. The God of the Bible - not only did He order His chosen people to carry out literal genocide - I mean, wipe out every Amalekite to the last man, woman, child, and, you know, donkey and so on, because hundreds of years ago they got in your way when you were trying to cross the desert - not only did He do things like that, but, after all, the God of the Bible was ready to destroy every living creature on earth because some humans irritated Him. That's the story of Noah. I mean, that's beyond genocide - you don't know how to describe this creature. Somebody offended Him, and He was going to destroy every living being on earth? And then He was talked into allowing two of each species to stay alive - that's supposed to be gentle and wonderful.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I think that the polls taken in Baghdad explain it very well, they seem to understand. The United States invaded Iraq to gain control of one of the major sources of the world's energy, right in the heart of the world's energy producing regions. To create, if they can, a dependent client state. To have permanent military bases. And to gain what's called “critical leverage” - I'm quoting Zbigniew Brzezinski - to gain critical leverage over rivals, the European and Asian economies. It's been understood since the Second World War, that if you have your hand on that spigot, the main source of the world's energy, you have what early planners called “veto power” over others. Iraq is also the last part of the world where there are vast, untapped, easily accessible energy resources. And you can be sure that they want the profits from that to go primarily to U.S.-based multinationals and back to the U.S. Treasury, not to rivals. There are plenty of reasons for invading Iraq.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In my view, if there's going to be an army, I think it ought to be a citizens' army. Now, here I do agree with some people, the top brass, they don't want a citizens' army. They want a mercenary army, what we call a volunteer army. A mercenary army of the disadvantaged. And in fact, in the Vietnam War, the U.S. military realized, they had made a very bad mistake. I mean, for the first time I think ever in the history of European imperialism, including us, they had used a citizens' army to fight a vicious, brutal, colonial war, and civilians just cannot do that kind of a thing. For that, you need the French Foreign Legion, the Gurkhas or something like that. Every predecessor has used mercenaries, often drawn from the country that they're attacking, like England ran India with Indian mercenaries. You take them from one place and send them to kill people in the other place. That's the standard way to run imperial wars. They're just too brutal and violent and murderous. Civilians are not going to be able to do it for very long. What happened was, the army started falling apart. One of the reasons that the army was withdrawn was because the top military wanted it out of there. They were afraid they were not going to have an army anymore. Soldiers were fragging officers. The whole thing was falling apart. They were on drugs. And that's why I think that they're not going to have a draft. That's why I'm in favor of it. If there's going to be an army that will fight brutal, colonial wars... it ought to be a citizens' army so that the attitudes of the society are reflected in the military.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[Q: can you conceive of any form in which you might support American military action taken, like the President's justification, in anticipation of an imminent and dangerous threat?] Why don't you generalize it, and say, can you conceive of any action which any state might take? Sure, you can imagine such things. Let's say you're in Iran right now. [audience laughter] It's under attack by the world's superpower, with embargoes... It's surrounded by states either occupied by its superpower enemy, or having nuclear weapons. Little way down the road is the regional superpower, which has hundreds of nuclear weapons, and other WMDs, and is essentially an offshore US military base. And has a bigger and more advanced air force than any NATO power, outside the United States. And in the past year has been supplied by the global superpower with 100 advanced jet bombers, openly advertised as able to fly to Iran and back to bomb it. And also provided with what the Hebrew press calls special weaponry, nobody knows what that means, but if you're an Iranian intelligence analyst you're going to give a worst case analysis, of course. And has actually been publicly provided with smart bombs, and deep penetration weapons... They have a terrific justification for anticipatory self defense, better than any other case I can think of. But would I approve of their bombing Israel, or carrying out terrorist acts in Washington? No, even though they have a pretty strong case, better than anything I can think of here. Just as the Japanese had a much better case than any that I can think of here, but I don't approve of Pearl Harbor. So yeah, we can conceive of cases, and in fact some of them are right in front of our eyes, but none of us approve of them. None of us. So if we don't approve of them in real cases, why discuss hypothetical cases that don't exist? We can do that in some philosophy seminar, but in the real world there're real cases that ought to concern us.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “...evidence-based approach, the U.S. negotiators argued, is interference with free markets, because corporations must have the right to deceive. [...] The claim itself is kind of amusing, I mean, even if you believe the free market rhetoric for a moment. The main purpose of advertising is to undermine markets. If you go to graduate school and you take a course in economics, you learn that markets are systems in which informed consumers make rational choices. That's what's so wonderful about it. But that's the last thing that the state corporate system wants. It is spending huge sums to prevent that, which brings us back to the viability of American democracy. For many years, elections here, election campaigns, have been run by the public relations industry and each time it's with increasing sophistication. And quite naturally, the industry uses the same technique to sell candidates that it uses to sell toothpaste or lifestyle drugs. The point is to undermine markets by projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information, and similarly, to undermine democracy by the same method, projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information. The candidates are trained, carefully trained, to project a certain image. Intellectuals like to make fun of George Bush's use of phrases like “misunderestimate,” and so on, but my strong suspicion is that he's trained to do that. He's carefully trained to efface the fact that he's a spoiled frat boy from Yale, and to look like a Texas roughneck kind of ordinary guy just like you, just waiting to get back to the ranch that they created for him...”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 25th anniversary of the International Relations Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, January 26, 2005

• “I think the basic question you ask is a good one: if we were to withdraw our own beating people over the heads with clubs, would it necessarily follow that somebody else would take that role, or are there other alternatives? Well yeah, there are other alternatives. For example, the alternatives that are favored by the overwhelming majority of the population of the United States. I mentioned one piece of it: let the UN function. The UN isn't perfect, a lot of things wrong with it, just like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights isn't perfect... But one step would be to pay some respect to the "decent opinion of mankind", to quote the famous author, and let international institutions function so as to reduce the likelihood that anybody will use force...”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Talk titled "The Idea of Universality in Linguistics and Human Rights" at MIT, March 15, 2005

• “The dominant propaganda systems have appropriated the term "globalization" to refer to the specific version of international economic integration that they favor, which privileges the rights of investors and lenders, those of people being incidental. In accord with this usage, those who favor a different form of international integration, which privileges the rights of human beings, become "anti-globalist." This is simply vulgar propaganda, like the term "anti-Soviet" used by the most disgusting commissars to refer to dissidents. It is not only vulgar, but idiotic. Take the World Social Forum, called "anti-globalization" in the propaganda system -- which happens to include the media, the educated classes, etc., with rare exceptions. The WSF is a paradigm example of globalization. It is a gathering of huge numbers of people from all over the world, from just about every corner of life one can think of, apart from the extremely narrow, highly privileged elites who meet at the competing World Economic Forum, and are called "pro-globalization" by the propaganda system. An observer watching this farce from Mars would collapse in hysterical laughter at the antics of the educated classes.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Interview by Sniježana Matejčić, June 2005 .

• “The Grand Inquisitor explains that you have to create mysteries because otherwise the common people will be able to understand things. They have to be subordinated so you have to make things look mysterious and complicated. That's the test of the intellectual. It's also good for them: then you're an important person, talking big words which nobody can understand. Sometimes it gets kind of comical, say in post-modern discourse. Especially around Paris, it has become a comic strip, I mean it's all gibberish. But it's very inflated, a lot of television cameras, a lot of posturing. They try to decode it and see what is the actual meaning behind it, things that you could explain to an eight-year old child. There's nothing there. But these are the ways in which contemporary intellectuals, including those on the Left, create great careers for themselves, power for themselves, marginalize people, intimidate people and so on.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: In Chomsky on Anarchism, 2005.

• “The crucial question for us is not whether they have a theocratic government. I'd personally prefer not, but I can think of a lot of places where I'd prefer not, like here. But, the question is whether the US will agree to let Iraq alone. That means to make it very clean and explicit, both in word and in action, that the US will withdraw, set a timetable for it, will not influence what goes on in Iraq, will not leave military bases, will let the country go off on its own. I think we also ought to pay massive reparations, but I'll stop short of that. Those are the crucial issues. It's not up to Rumsfeld what kind of government they have, it's up to him to get out.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “After the invasion, there was sophisticated massive looting of the installations that were constructed in the 1980s - that includes high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear and chemical weapons and missiles, and also toxins for biological weapons. Prior to the US-British invasion, these sites had been monitored by UN inspectors, but they were quickly kicked out of the country and have not been back since, while the occupation forces left the sites unguarded, and very sophisticated looting operations took place. Where this huge massive equipment has gone no one knows, and it's uncomfortable to guess. The ironies are almost inexpressible. The US and Britain invaded to prevent the use of WMDs that did not exist, and they succeeded in providing the terrorists that they had mobilized with the means to develop WMDs that the US and Britain had provided to Saddam Hussein.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It should have been the easiest invasion in history, and the incompetence and arrogance of the Pentagon planners turned it into a total catastrophe. So yes, it hasn't worked out the way they wanted, but that has nothing to do with their plans. It would be like saying that Hitler didn't intend to conquer the world because he failed. They actually succeeded in creating an insurgency, which didn't exist, there was no basis for it and no outside support. In fact, the U.S. and Britain were compelled to allow elections. The elections in Iraq are a triumph of mass popular nonviolent resistance. Washington and London tried in every way they could to evade elections. You go back through 2003, there was one after another scheme proposed, to try to avoid elections. But they couldn't do it, there were mass demonstrations, partially led by Ayatollah Sistani. Finally they had to back down, and allow elections. Now they're trying in every way to subvert them.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Interview by George Arney on BBC World Service, January 2, 2006 .

• “We might add now that we do have an authoritative account of why the United States bombed Serbia in 1999. It comes from Strobe Talbott, now the director of the Brookings Institution, but in 1999 he was in charge of the State Department-Pentagon team that supervised the diplomacy in the affair. He wrote the introduction to a recent book by his Director of Communications, John Norris, which presents the position of the Clinton administration at the time of the bombing. Norris writes that "it was Yugoslavia's resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform - not the plight of Kosovar Albanians - that best explains NATO's war". In brief, they were resisting absorption into the U.S. dominated international socioeconomic system. Talbott adds that thanks to John Norris, anyone interested in the war in Kosovo "will know … how events looked and felt at the time to those of us who were involved" in the war, actually directing it. This authoritative explanation will come as no surprise at all to students of international affairs who are more interested in fact than rhetoric. And it will also come as no surprise, to those familiar with intellectual life, that the attack continues to be hailed as a grand achievement of humanitarian intervention, despite massive Western documentation to the contrary, and now an explicit denial at the highest level; which will change nothing, it's not the way intellectual life works.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Talk at the Englert Theatre in Iowa, April 10, 2006

• “Personally I'm very much opposed to Hamas' policies in almost every respect. However, we should recognize that the policies of Hamas are more forthcoming and more conducive to a peaceful settlement than those of the United States or Israel. ... So, for example, Hamas has called for a long-term indefinite truce on the international border. There is a long-standing international consensus that goes back over thirty years that there should be a two-state political settlement on the international border, the pre-June 1967 border, with minor and mutual modifications. That's the official phrase. Hamas is willing to accept that as a long-term truce. The United States and Israel are unwilling even to consider it... The demand on Hamas by the United States and the European Union and Israel [...] is first that they recognize the State of Israel. Actually, that they recognize its right to exist. Well, Israel and the U.S. certainly don't recognize the right of Palestine to exist, nor recognize any state of Palestine. In fact, they have been acting consistently to undermine any such possibility. The second condition is that Hamas must renounce violence. Israel and the United States certainly do not renounce violence. The third condition is that Hamas accept international agreements. The United States and Israel reject international agreements. So, though the policies of Hamas are, again in my view, unacceptable, they happen to be closer to the international consensus on a political peaceful settlement than those of their antagonists, and it's a reflection of the power of the imperial states - the United States and Europe - that they are able to shift the framework, so that the problem appears to be Hamas' policies, and not the more extreme policies of the United States and Israel... And we must remember that in their case it's not just policies. It's not words - it's actions.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Interview on LBC TV, May 23, 2006

• “In order to make it look dramatic, they staged what was ridiculed by some Israeli commentators, correctly, they staged a national trauma... There was a huge media extravaganza, you know, pictures of a little Jewish boy try to hold back the soldiers destroying his house... And a lot of the settlers were allowed in, so there could be a pretense of violence, though there wasn't any... The withdrawal could have been done perfectly quietly. All that was necessary was for Israel to announce that on August 1st the army will withdraw. And immediately the settlers, who had been subsidized to go there in the first place, and to stay there, would get on to the trucks that are provided for them and move over to the West Bank where they can move into new subsidized settlements. But if you did that way, there wouldn't have been any national trauma, any justification for saying, "never can we give up another 1 mm² of land". What made all of this even more ridiculous was that it was a repetition of what was described in Haaretz as "Operation National Truama 1982". After Israel finally agreed to Sadat's 1971 offer, they had to evacuate northeastern Sinai, and there was another staged trauma, which again was ridiculed by Israel commentators. By a miracle, none of the settlers who were resisting needed a Band-Aid, while Palestinians were being killed all over the place.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Talk titled "The Current Crisis in the Middle East" at MIT, September 21, 2006

• “As a number the specialists have pointed out, Bush is Osama bin Laden's best ally. ... [9/11] was bitterly condemned by the jihadi movement around the world. The leading figures, the radical clerics and others, were denouncing it. Well, there was an opportunity to make some moves towards the Muslim world, and in fact even the radical Islamic extremist elements of the Muslim world, and undermine support for Al-Qaeda. What Bush did was the opposite: resorted to violence, particularly in Iraq, which simply mobilized support for Osama bin Laden. That's the way to deal with terrorism if you want to escalate it.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Interview by Tom Ashbrook, October 03, 2006

• “Nobody doubts that the Russians committed aggression, that Saddam Hussein committed aggression. We attribute to them rational goals, maybe they wanted to control the energy of the Middle East or something. With regard to ourselves, it's impossible... We just cannot adopt towards ourselves the same sane attitudes that we adopt easily, in fact reflexively, when others commit crimes... And if anyone says it, educated people, liberal intellectuals, are infuriated. Because it suggests that we could do something that's not noble. We can make mistakes, that's easy. You can criticize mistakes. You can criticize low-level crimes, like Abu-Ghraib, you can criticize that. You can criticize My Lai. But not the educated, civilized people, the kind of people we have dinner with, see at concerts, sitting in air-conditioned offices planning mass-murder. So that's beyond criticism. On the other hand, if it's half-crazed G.I.s in the field, uneducated, don't know who's going to shoot at them next, you can blame them, you can say how awful they are. You can criticize Lynndie England, disadvantaged young woman, very different from us. But how about the guys who organized and planned it? No.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The threat of China is not military. The threat of China is they can't be intimidated... Europe you can intimidate. When the US tries to get people to stop investing in Iran, European companies pull out, China disregards it. You look at history and understand why — they've been around for 4,000 years, they have contempt for the barbarians, they just don't give a damn. OK, you scream, we'll go ahead and take over a big piece of Saudi or Iranian oil. And that's the threat, you can't intimidate them — it's driving people in Washington berserk. But, you know, of all the major powers, they've been the least aggressive militarily.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics", October 2008, ISBN: 978-1-59451-631-3. Review by Noam Chomsky: That the Obama phenomenon is of considerable significance in American social and political history should hardly be in doubt. But what exactly is it, and where might it lead? This lucid and penetrating book situates it firmly within the ‘corporate-dominated and militaristic U.S. elections system and political culture,’ explores in depth its substantive content and its limits, and draws valuable lessons about how these might be transcended in the unending struggle to achieve a more just and free society and a peaceful world. It is a very welcome contribution in complex and troubled times.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: In "Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics" by Paul Street , 2008.

• “Sometimes when I'm having a boring interview on the telephone, and I'm trying to think about something else because the questions are too boring, and I start looking around the room where I work, you know, full of books piled up to the sky, all different kinds of topics. I start calculating how many centuries would I have to live reading twenty-four hours a day every day of the week to make a dent in what I'd like to learn about things, it's pretty depressing.[...] You know, we have little bits of understanding, glimpses, a little bit of light here and there, but there's a tremendous amount of darkness, which is a challenge. I think life would be pretty boring if we understood everything. It's better if we don't understand anything... and know that we don't, that's the important part.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Interview in Cardiff, Wales, UK on March 11, 2011

• “[ZEIT Campus: You often say you are an anarchist. What do you mean by that?] Chomsky: Students should challenge authorities and join a long anarchist tradition. [ZEIT Campus: “Challenge authorities” – a liberal or a moderate leftist could accept that invitation.] Chomsky: As soon as one identifies, challenges and overcomes illegitimate power, he or she is an anarchist. Most people are anarchists. What they call themselves doesn't matter to me. [ZEIT Campus: Who or what must challenge today's student generation?] Chomsky: This world is full of suffering, distress, violence and catastrophes. Students must decide: does something concern you or not? I say: look around, analyze the problems, ask yourself what you can do and set out on the work!”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Where neoliberal rules have been observed since the ’70s, economic performance has generally deteriorated and social democratic programs have substantially weakened. In the United States, which partially accepted these rules, real wages for the majority have largely stagnated for 30 years, instead of tracking productivity growth as before, while work hours have increased, now well beyond those of Europe. Benefits, which always lagged, have declined further. Social indicators—general measures of the health of the society—also tracked growth until the mid-’70s, when they began to decline, falling to the 1960 level by the end of the millennium.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours" in Steven Best; Richard Kahn; Anthony J. Nocella II; Peter McLaren (eds.). The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination. Rowman & Littlefield, 2011. p. 6

• “In the past, the United States has sometimes, kind of sardonically, been described as a one-party state: the business party with two factions called Democrats and Republicans. That's no longer true. It's still a one-party state, the business party. But it only has one faction. The faction is moderate Republicans, who are now called Democrats. There are virtually no moderate Republicans in what's called the Republican Party and virtually no liberal Democrats in what's called the Democratic Party. It's basically a party of what would be moderate Republicans and similarly, Richard Nixon would be way at the left of the political spectrum today. Eisenhower would be in outer space. There is still something called the Republican Party, but it long ago abandoned any pretence of being a normal parliamentary party. It's in lock-step service to the very rich and the corporate sector and has a catechism that everyone has to chant in unison, kind of like the old Communist Party. The distinguished conservative commentator, one of the most respected – Norman Ornstein – describes today's Republican Party as, in his words, “a radical insurgency – ideologically extreme, scornful of facts and compromise, dismissive of its political opposition” – a serious danger to the society, as he points out.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “One respect in which the United States is unusually open is in declassifying government documents. ... [W]e have better access to internal government decisions than any country that I know of. The system isn't perfect ... . [Most] declassified documents ... are just totally boring. You can read through volume after volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States and maybe you'll find three sentences that are worth paying any attention to. Many of the classified documents have little to do with genuine security but a lot to do with preventing the population from knowing what the government is up to. I think that's true of what I've seen of WikiLeaks, too. Take the one example I mentioned. Ambassador Patterson's comments about Pakistan and the danger of the Bush-Obama policy destabilizing a country with one of the biggest nuclear weapons programs in the world ... . That's something the population ought to know about, but it has to be kept from them. You have to describe our policies in terms of defending ourselves from attack when you're in fact increasing the threat of attack. That's true over and over again.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Would I [support reparations for descendants of black slaves]? Very much so. Not just African Americans. We ourselves didn't own slaves, but we — me — are rich and privileged because of the torture of blacks for centuries. And yes, we owe them reparations. The same with the remnants of Native Americans. Same with countries that we've destroyed. What about Iraq? I mean we've devastated Iraq, killed hundreds of thousands of people, generated millions of refugees, created a sectarian conflict that's destroying the place. Is it our responsibility? Sure. I think the call for reparations is very legitimate. Take Europe and Africa. People are fleeing from Africa to Europe, not the other way around. Is there a reason for that? Yeah, a couple of centuries of murderous, brutal colonialism. So sure, they owe reparations, not just taking in the refugees, but do something about it, create conditions in their own societies in which there won’t be refugees. That’s the real answer to the so-called refugee problem. But it requires those who have been wielding the whip to say "okay, we benefitted from it, it’s our responsibility, we’ll do something about it.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Turning finally to the question raised, to be precise, it appears that [Hillary] Clinton received a slight majority of the vote. The apparent decisive victory [of Donald Trump] has to do with curious features of American politics: among other factors, the Electoral College residue of the founding of the country as an alliance of separate states; the winner-take-all system in each state; the arrangement of congressional districts (sometimes by gerrymandering) to provide greater weight to rural votes (in past elections, and probably this one too, Democrats have had a comfortable margin of victory in the popular vote for the House, but hold a minority of seats); the very high rate of abstention (usually close to half in presidential elections, this one included). Of some significance for the future is the fact that in the age 18-25 range, Clinton won handily, and Sanders had an even higher level of support. How much this matters depends on what kind of future humanity will face.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: First published in Truthout on 14 November 2016. Then published in the book Optimism over Despair in 2017, pages 121-122 (ISBN 9780241981979).

• “One of the great achievements of the doctrinal system has been to divert anger from the corporate sector to the government that implements the programs that the corporate sector designs, such as the highly protectionist corporate/investor rights agreements that are uniformly mis-described as "free trade agreements" in the media and commentary. With all its flaws, the government is, to some extent, under popular influence and control, unlike the corporate sector. It is highly advantageous for the business world to foster hatred for pointy-headed government bureaucrats and to drive out of people's minds the subversive idea that the government might become an instrument of popular will, a government of, by and for the people.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: First published in Truthout on 14 November 2016. Then published in the book Optimism over Despair in 2017, page 125 (ISBN 9780241981979).

• “If you look over the history of regulation — railroad regulation, financial regulation and so on — you find that, quite commonly, it's either initiated by the economic concentrations that are being regulated, or it's supported by them. And the reason is because they know that, sooner or later, they can take over the regulators and essentially run what they do. They can offer what amounts to bribes — offer them jobs or whatever it may be — it's an advantage to the regulators to accommodate themselves to the will of the powerful. It happens naturally in many ways, and ends up with what's called “regulatory capture.” The business being regulated is in fact running the regulators.”

  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)

• “Each time, the taxpayer is called on to bail out those who created the crisis, increasingly the major financial institutions. In a capitalist economy, you wouldn't do that. In a capitalist system, that would wipe out the investors who made risky investments. But the rich and powerful, they don't want a capitalist system. They want to be able to run to the “nanny state” as soon as they're in trouble, and get bailed out by the taxpayer. They're given a government insurance policy, which means that no matter how often you risk everything, if you get in trouble, the public will bail you out because you're too big to fail — and it's just repeating over and over again.”

  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)

• “We’re facing an imminent threat, not far removed, of enormous damage. The effects are already visible but nothing like what’s going to come. A sea level rise of a couple of feet will be massively destructive. It will make today’s immigration issues look like trivialities. And it’s not that the administration is unaware of this. So, Donald Trump, for example, is perfectly aware of the dangerous effects, in the short term, of global warming. So, for example, recently he applied to the government of Ireland for permission to build a wall to protect his golf course in Ireland from rising sea levels. And Rex Tillerson, who was supposed to be the adult in the room before he was thrown out, as CEO of ExxonMobil, was devoting enormous resources to climate change denial, although he had, sitting on his desk, the reports of ExxonMobil scientists, who, since the '70s, in fact, were on the forefront of warning of the dire effects of this accelerating phenomenon. I don't know what word in the language—I can’t find one—that applies to people of that kind, who are willing to sacrifice the literal—the existence of organized human life, not in the distant future, so they can put a few more dollars in highly overstuffed pockets. The word “evil” doesn’t begin to approach it.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Noam Chomsky on Mass Media Obsession with Russia & the Stories Not Being Covered in the Trump Era (27 July 2018)

• “Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that's almost a joke. First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Israeli intervention in US elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president's policies - what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Noam Chomsky on Mass Media Obsession with Russia & the Stories Not Being Covered in the Trump Era (27 July 2018)

• “The crucial question...what is NATO for? ...From the beginning.. we had drilled into our heads that the purpose of NATO was to defend us from the Russian hordes... OK, 1991, no more Russian hordes. There were negotiations, between George Bush, the first; James Baker, secretary of state; Mikhail Gorbachev; Genscher and Kohl, the Germans, on how to deal... after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev... agreed to allow Germany, now unified, to join NATO... There was a quid pro quo, namely that... NATO means basically U.S. forces—not expand to East Berlin, to East Germany... the phrase that was used was “not one inch to the east.” NATO immediately moved to East Germany. Under Clinton, other countries, former Russian satellites, were introduced into NATO. Finally, NATO went so far, as I mentioned before... to suggest that even Ukraine, right at the heartland of Russian strategic concerns...join NATO. So, what's NATO doing altogether? Well, actually, its mission was changed. The official mission of NATO was changed to become to be—to control and safeguard the global energy system, sea lanes, pipelines and so on. And, of course, on the side, it's acting as a intervention force for the United States. Is that a legitimate reason for us to maintain NATO, to be an instrument for U.S. global domination? I think that's a rather serious question. That's not the question that's asked.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Noam Chomsky: U.S. Must Improve Relations with Russia and Challenge the Expansion of NATO, DemocracyNow, (30 July 2018)

• “...the Green New Deal is exactly the right idea. You can raise questions about the specific form in which Ocasio-Cortez and Markey introduced it: Maybe it shouldn't be exactly this way; it should be a little bit differently. But the general idea is quite right. And there's very solid work explaining, developing in detail, exactly how it could work. So, a very fine economist at UMass Amherst, Robert Pollin, has written extensively on, in extensive detail, with close analysis of how you could implement policies of this kind in a very effective way, which would actually make a better society. It wouldn't be that you'd lose from it; you'd gain from it. The costs of renewable energy are declining very sharply. If you eliminate the massive subsidies that are given to fossil fuels, they probably already surpass them. There are many means that can be implemented and carried out to overcome, certainly to mitigate, maybe to overcome, this serious crisis... A lot of the media commentary ridiculing this and that aspect of it are essentially beside the point... the basic idea is correct.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Green New Deal Is Exactly the Right Idea, DemocracyNow (27 May 2019)

• “The Democrats... gave Trump a huge gift. In fact, they may have handed him the next election. That's just a—that's a matter of being so unwilling to deal with fundamental issues, that they're looking for something on the side that will somehow give political success. The real issues are different things. They're things like climate change, like global warming, like the Nuclear Posture Review, deregulation. These are real issues. But the Democrats aren't going after those. They're looking for something else—the Democratic establishment. I'm not talking about the young cohort that's coming in, which is quite different. Just all of that has to be shifted significantly, if there's going to be a legitimate political opposition to the right-wing drift that's taking place. And it can happen, can definitely happen, but it's going to take work.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Chomsky: By Focusing on Russia, Democrats Handed Trump a “Huge Gift” & Possibly the 2020 Election, DemocracyNow (27 May 2019)

• “Under the Trump administration, aggressive rhetoric against the Venezuelan government has ratcheted up to a more extreme and threatening level, with Trump administration officials talking of “military action” and condemning Venezuela, along with Cuba and Nicaragua, as part of a “troika of tyranny.” Problems resulting from Venezuelan government policy have been worsened by US economic sanctions, illegal under the Organization of American States and the United Nations ― as well as US law and other international treaties and conventions. These sanctions have cut off the means by which the Venezuelan government could escape from its economic recession, while causing a dramatic falloff in oil production and worsening the economic crisis, and causing many people to die because they can't get access to life-saving medicines. Meanwhile, the US and other governments continue to blame the Venezuelan government ― solely ― for the economic damage, even that caused by the US sanctions.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Open Letter by Over 70 Scholars and Experts Condemns US-Backed Coup Attempt in Venezuela: Stop Interfering in Venezuela’s Internal Politics, (Letter written by Chomsky & three others), (24 January 2019)

• “The Coronavirus is serious enough but it's worth recalling that there is a much greater horror approaching, we are racing to the edge of disaster, far worse than anything that's ever happened in human history.... Donald Trump & his minions are in the lead, in racing to the abyss. In fact there are two immense threats that we are facing. One is the growing threat of nuclear war, which has exacerbated it by the tearing what's left of the arms control regime and the other of course is the growing threat of global warming. Both threats can be dealt with but there isn't a lot of time... the corona virus is a horrible... can have terrifying consequences but there will be recovery, while the others won't be recovered, it's finished. If we don't deal with them we're done.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If we're leaving our fate to sociopathic buffoons, we're finished... Trump is the worst, that's because of US power which is overwhelming. We are talking about U.S. decline but you just look at the world, you don't see that when the U.S. imposes sanctions, murderous, devastating sanctions, that's the only country that can do that, but everyone has to follow. Europe may not like, in fact hate actions on Iran, but they have to follow, they have to follow the master, or else they get kicked out of the international financial system. That's not a law of nature, it's a decision in Europe to be subordinate to the master in Washington. Other countries don't even have a choice....”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Now Cuba has been suffering from it from the moment where it gained independence, but it's astonishing that they survived but they stayed resilient and one of the most ironic elements of today's virus crisis, is that Cuba is helping Europe. I mean this is so shocking, that you don't know how to describe it. That Germany can't help Greece, but Cuba can help the European countries. If you stop to think about what that means, all words fail, just as when you see thousands of people dying in the Mediterranean, fleeing from a region that has been devastated... and being sent to the deaths in the Mediterranean, you don't know what words to use.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The scale of the plague is surprising, indeed shocking, but not its appearance. Nor the fact that the U.S. has the worst record in responding to the crisis. Scientists have been warning of a pandemic for years, insistently so since the SARS epidemic of 2003, also caused by a , for which vaccines were developed but did not proceed beyond the pre-clinical level. That was the time to begin to put in place rapid-response systems in preparation for an outbreak and to set aside spare capacity that would be needed. Initiatives could also have been undertaken to develop defenses and modes of treatment for a likely recurrence with a related virus. But scientific understanding is not enough. There has to be someone to pick up the ball and run with it. That option was barred by the pathology of the contemporary order. Market signals were clear: There's no profit in preventing a future catastrophe.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The government could have stepped in, but that's barred by reigning doctrine: "Government is the problem," Reagan told us with his sunny smile, meaning that decision-making has to be handed over even more fully to the business world, which is devoted to private profit and is free from influence by those who might be concerned with the common good. The years that followed injected a dose of neoliberal brutality to the unconstrained capitalist order and the twisted form of markets it constructs. The depth of the pathology is revealed clearly by one of the most dramatic — and murderous — failures: the lack of ventilators that is one the major bottlenecks in confronting the pandemic.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “One effect is the shockingly belated and limited testing, well below others, making it impossible to implement the successful test-and-trace strategies that have prevented the epidemic from breaking out of control in functioning societies. Even the best hospitals lack basic equipment. The U.S. is now the global epicenter of the crisis. This only skims the surface of Trumpian malevolence, but there's no space for more here. It is tempting to cast the blame on Trump for the disastrous response to the crisis. But if we hope to avert future catastrophes, we must look beyond him. Trump came to office in a sick society, afflicted by 40 years of neoliberalism, with still deeper roots.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The U.S.'s privatized for-profit health care system had long been an international scandal, with twice the per capita expenses of other developed societies and some of the worst outcomes. Neoliberal doctrine struck another blow, introducing business measures of efficiency: just-on-time service with no fat in the system. Any disruption and the system collapses. Much the same is true of the fragile global economic order forged on neoliberal principles. This is the world that Trump inherited, the target of his battering ram. [...] It seems that many Americans would prefer to spend more money as long as it doesn't go to taxes (incidentally killing tens of thousands of people annually). That's a telling indication of the state of American democracy, as people experience it; and from another perspective, of the force of the doctrinal system crafted by business power and its intellectual servants. The neoliberal assault has intensified this pathological element of the national culture, but the roots go much deeper and are illustrated in many ways, a topic very much worth pursuing.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If you look at the birth rate in the U.S. right now, the majority are non-white, you don't have to know the statistics to know what that means. They will lose the white supremacy. The concept of being white is not a race concept, but rather sociological. If you go back, not very far, Jews were not considered white. Neither were the Irish. In late-19th century Boston, you could find signs at restaurants saying “No dogs or Irish.” They gradually became white as they assimilated into the culture, especially when they gained wealth and political power. And that's now happening with the Hispanic population.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Though the situation has somewhat improved in recent years, our education system does not even come close to adequately reflecting the impact of these movements of ordinary people on our history. One major contribution was Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States and the companion Voices volume, which lifted the veil from central parts of history that had been concealed or sidelined in the standard patriotic versions. But there is a long way to go. In particular, labor history is virtually effaced in the press and the educational system, as well as in the media. Not long ago fine journalists covering the labor movement. Today, almost none. Every newspaper has a business section; none could even imagine a labor section, addressing the interests and concerns of a large majority of the population. Social movements receive cursory attention, usually highly misleading.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “At one point you talked about the change from language acquisition to language development. And I think that's a very significant idea. Language isn't really learned; it just grows in the mind. It's something that develops naturally, automatically [...]. It's almost like learning to walk. You don't learn to walk, it just comes automatically. At a certain point a child stands up, starts moving, figures it, gets to understand how to distribute your weight. Nobody's taught you this, but, a lot of calculation and computation goes into simply walking down the street. You don't know the rules, you couldn't know the rules, maybe some biologist could figure out what they are. But that's not the way you pick up walking.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The one-sided class war of the last 40 years is becoming two-sided. The population is actually beginning to participate instead of just accepting the hammer blows. We now are having a huge strike. One of the major strikes in American history, when workers are simply saying, we’re not gonna go back to the rotten, oppressive jobs, precarious, broadens circumstances is novel, we’re just not gonna accept it. And that’s a major factor in the economy now. And yes, it’s a strike and it’s showing up in other ways too, there are, for example, the teacher’s strikes were quite important. These are non-unionized red states, tremendous popular support. When you live in Arizona, where one of them was signs on every lawn, supporting the teachers, not a radical state by any means. They were not just calling for better wages, which they greatly deserve, but for saving the children, saving the public school, public education, which has been under severe attack for 45 years.”

  Noam Chomsky (born 1928) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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