Noam Chomsky

The general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.

For example, a US corporation that has an outlet in Puerto Rico may decide to take its profits in Puerto Rico, because of tax rebates. It shifts its prices around, using what’s called “transfer pricing,” so it doesn’t seem to be making a profit here.

Powerful states have quite typically considered themselves to be exceptionally magnificent and the United States is no exception to that. The basis for it is not very substantial, to put it politely.

Israel is…seeking to expand its base of support to the East, primarily to China and India, the latter becoming a very natural ally for a number of reasons, including the drift in both societies toward ultranationalism, reactionary internal policies and hatred of Islam.

Like, say I can choose to buy a Toyota or a Chevrolet, but I can’t choose in a market system to get a subway system, that is a collective action. Market systems don’t allow that. So it has an enormous distorting effect on the choices that are available.

The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.

To those who oppose us, we say, ‘Strike the woman, and you strike the rock.’

Like all advanced societies, the U.S. has relied on state intervention in the economy from its origins, though for ideological reasons, the fact is commonly denied.

Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don’t let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?

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.

When we analyze this war in a materialistic way and ask when is it going to end and who will be the winner and the loser, it means that we do not see the endgame.

Where in the world have you seen construction people who do everything on time, with good quality and at minimal prices? Just give me one country like that. A country like that doesn’t exist in the world, you know. There’s not one such country anywhere in the world.

The Leninist antagonism to the most essential features of socialism was evident from the very start. Lenin and Trotsky, upon assuming power, immediately devoted themselves to destroying the liberatory potential of Soviets and factory committees.

Anyone can be a moral individual, concerned with human rights and problems; but only a college professor, a trained expert, can solve technical problems by ‘sophisticated’ methods. Ergo, it is only problems of the latter sort that are important or real.

Large corporate advertisers on TV will rarely sponsor programs that engage in serious criticisms of corporate activities, such as the problem of environmental degradation, the workings of the military-industrial complex, or corporate support of and benefits from 3rd World tyrannies.

…the Pentagon has been the primary Keynesian mechanism whereby the government intervenes to maintain what is ludicrously called the health of the economy by inducing production, that means production of waste and destruction

The American way is the way most law-abiding, tax-paying Americans live-in debt. Does this make a balanced budget un-American?

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.

If Russians knew how to read they would write me off.

We can make a rough distinction between the managerial class and the rest. The managers take part in decision-making in the state, the private economy, and the doctrinal institutions. The rest are to cede authority to state and private elites, to accept what they are told…

China’s refusal to accept opium from Britain’s Indian colony was denounced by John Quincy Adams as a violation of the Christian principle of ‘love thy neighbor’ and ‘an enormous outrage upon the rights of human nature, and upon the first principles of the rights of nations’.