Noam Chomsky

So, sit down strikes in the 1930’s, organization of women’s consciousness-raising groups in the ’60’s and ’70’s, anti-war activism. I mean, all of these things work. They have to be done of course. They don’t happen by themselves.

While greatly honored internationally, Mandela remained on the US terrorist list until 2008, when at last a congressional resolution allowed him to enter the ‘land of the free’ without special dispensation.

It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions – you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism.

Immigrants would be very happy to stay in their own countries instead of coming here to unpleasant and harsh situations. They can’t, because we have ruined their countries. So, the first step…should be to help reconstruct and rebuild what we have destroyed.

In a situation of occupation or domination, the occupier…has to justify what it’s doing. There is only one way to do it — become a racist. You have to blame the victim. Once you become a raving racist in self-defense, you’ve lost your capacity to understand what’s happening.

For many years, I have been writing and speaking about the danger of the rise of an honest and charismatic ideologue in the United States, someone who could exploit the fear and anger that has long been boiling in much of the society, and who could direct it away from the actual agents of malaise to vulnerable targets. That could indeed lead to what sociologist Bertram Gross called ‘friendly fascism’ in a perceptive study 35 years ago..

Labour Party members must all be free to criticise and oppose injustice and abuse wherever we find it.

We are no longer a leader. Putin has become the leader, and it’s an embarassment to our country.

When one person dies, it’s a tragedy, but when a million people die, it’s a statistic.

About half of what are called US exports to Mexico are intrafirm transfers of this sort. They don’t enter the Mexican market, and there’s no meaningful sense in which they’re exports to Mexico. Still, that’s called ‘trade.’

Going to war creates a legacy of bitterness and problems, let us be a force for change in the world, a force for humanity in the world, a force for peace in the world, and a force that recognizes we can not go on like this, with grotesque levels of global inequality, grotesque threats to our environment all around the world, without the rich and powerful governments stepping up to the plate to make sure our world becomes safer and better — and those people don’t end up in poverty, in refugee camps, wasting their lives away.

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.

This is not a battle between the United States of America and terrorism, but between the free and democratic world and terrorism.

I was in Moscow recently and I spoke, indirectly and directly, with President Putin, who could not have been nicer, and we had a tremendous success.

Trump himself seems to be having the time of his life. He’s constantly in the limelight, his loyal base worships his every move, he’s free to defy convention, to insult anyone he chooses, to disrupt the international economic and political order at will…

Not only were [the British] able to break into China for the first time, but also the profits from opium supported the Raj, the costs of the British Navy, and provided very significant capital which fueled the industrial revolution in England.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed upon. Period.

There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term ‘conservatism’ can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country’s future.

Politics is like boxing – you try to knock out your opponents.

Provision must be made for the extension of speedy and effective assistance when any African State is threatened with military aggression. We cannot rely solely on international morality.

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.