Noam Chomsky

If by ‘intellectual’ you mean people who are a special class who are in the business of imposing thoughts and forming ideas for people in power, and telling people what they should believe…they’re really more a kind of secular priesthood, whose task it is to uphold the doctrinal truths of the society. And the population SHOULD be anti-intellectual in that repect.

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

Distress is so severe that among white middle-aged Americans, mortality is actually increasing, something unheard of in functioning societies apart from war or pestilence. There are similar phenomena in Europe under the ‘business first’ (‘neoliberal’/’austerity’) assault.

No serious analyst believes that the ruling clerics [in Iran] are eager to see their country and possessions vaporized, the immediate consequence of their coming even close to initiating a nuclear war.

I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.

Many countries are so weak that they can’t really solve their internal problems in the face of US power; they can’t even control their own wealthy. Their rich have virtually no social obligations-they don’t pay taxes and don’t keep their money in the country.

Much more likely, I think, is that [Ryan] decided to leave Congress because he had achieved his long-standing goals, particularly with the ‘Donor Relief Act of 2017’ and the deficit cuts that open the way to sharp reduction of entitlements: health, social security, pensions.

Edward Bernays’ first great achievement, that sort of made a star out of him, was a public relations campaign trying to get women to smoke. So he had models walking down Fifth Avenue smoking cigarettes and showing how it makes you beautiful and slim.

The introduction, for example, of restrictive tariffs on steel, on aluminum, not only for Europe but also for Canada and Mexico, in essence these are also sanctions… They are related to the pragmatic national interests of the United States.

But I was amazed at how organized the Palestinian election authority was, how competent they were in setting up their polling places and the poll workers they had.

Ah, these diplomats! What chatterboxes! There’s only one way to shut them up – cut them down with machine guns. Bulganin, go and get me one!

America is interested in re-arranging the region as it sees fit.

An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.

The leaders of the world’s largest economies agreed during the November 2008 G20 summit not to create barriers hindering global trade and capital flows. Russia shares these principles.

The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn’t betray it I’d be ashamed of myself.

Surely, God on high has not refused to give us enough wisdom to find ways to bring us an improvement in relations between the two great nations on earth.

We have the best government that money can buy.

We have more people than ever using foodbanks, we have a greater number of people being homeless and many people in housing stress.

My response to the end of Soviet tyranny was similar to my reaction to the defeat of Hitler and Mussolini. In all cases, it is a victory for the human spirit. It should have been particularly welcome to socialists, since a great enemy of socialism had at last collapsed.

We don’t say that three-year-olds are lying if they say they saw a dragon outside, or an actor in a play. It’s also not clear that it’s tactically useful to tot up the random falsehoods that pepper [Trump’s] tweets and orations.

To lay down… limits to the action of the government; to confer certain rights on private persons, and to secure to them the undisputed enjoyment of those rights… [are] the main objects.