Noam Chomsky

When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: Why do I care if my high school’s team wins the football game? I don’t know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me… why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense. But the point is, it does make sense: It’s a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it’s training in irrational jingoism. That’s also a feature of competitive sports.

Reparations – not just aid – should be provided by those responsible for devastating Iraqi civilian society by cruel sanctions and military actions, and – together with other criminal states – for supporting Saddam Hussein through his worst atrocities and beyond. That is the minimum that honesty requires.

The ferocity of the assault against labor by the U.S. business class is illustrated by Washington’s failure, for 60 years, to ratify the core principle of international labor law, which guarantees freedom of association.

One goal of a well-crafted propaganda system is to dull the mental faculties, reducing its targets to a level at which they will respond with appropriate enthusiasm to slogans carrying a patriotic message.

In a Canadian-style insurance system, the costs are distributed in the same way that taxes are. If the tax system is progressive…then the wealthy will also pay more of the costs of health care.

But the rich countries of the world-the United States, European Union-the ones who have an overwhelming responsibility for the circumstances from which the refugees are fleeing, they can’t help with it. They can’t deal with it. Too much for us. Go somewhere else.

No matter how hard the loss, defeat might serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out.

The most effective device [of thought control developed in democratic societies] is the bounding of the thinkable, achieved by tolerating debate, even encouraging it, though only within proper limits.

I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics.

Despite all the achievements of civilisation, the human being is still one of the most vulnerable creatures on earth.

You’re thinking of Eurpoe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe.

I feel like everyone else in this country today. I am utterly devastated.

Under Obama, the [Democratic] party was reduced to shambles at the local and state level, a particularly serious matter because the 2020 elections will determine redistricting, offering opportunities for gerrymandering even beyond today’s scandalous situation.

One should seek out an audience that matters — and furthermore (another important qualification), it should not be seen as an audience, but as a community of common concern in which one hopes to participate constructively. We should not be speaking to, but with.

We’re numb. We’re numb to 500 kids getting killed in Chicago last year. We’re numb that there were dozens of police shootings in the beginning of July. We’re numb to places on the earth where we don’t live. Our life is OK, but it’s OK for other people’s lives to not be OK.

In Nixon’s administration, you get the consumer safety legislation (CPSC), safety and health regulations in the workplace (OSHA) and the EPA – the Environmental Protection Agency. Business didn’t like it, of course – they didn’t like the higher taxes, didn’t like the regulation.

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours.

I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.

So the fear of drugs and the fear of crime is very much stimulated by state and business propaganda. The National Justice Commission repeatedly points out that crime in the United States, while sort of high, is not off the spectrum for industrialized societies.

Iraq is a small but very proud nation.

The ability to ignore unwanted facts is one of the prerogatives of unchallenged power. Closely related is the right to radically revise history.