Noam Chomsky

The big transnationals want to reduce freedom by undermining the democratic functioning of the states in which they’re based, while at the same time ensuring the government will be powerful enough to protect and support them.

Trump does have a base, a voter base. He’s kicking them in the face with abandon. And the idea is: How do you hold onto them while you’re doing this? Not an easy trick. And this, I think, is part of the con.

Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.

As in the past, the costs and risks of the coming phases of the industrial economy were to be socialized, with eventual profits privatized …

For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of ‘brainwashing under freedom’ to which we are subjected and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting instruments.

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…

I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m more honest and my women are more beautiful.

There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious and unknown social laws. These are simply decisions made within institutions that are subject to human will and that must face the test of legitimacy. And if they do not meet the test, they can be replaced by other institutions that are more free and more just, as has happened often in the past.

Advertisers will want, more generally, to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that interfere with the “buying mood”…and thus fit in with the spirit of the primary purpose of program purchases-the dissemination of a selling message.

To choose one’s victims, to prepare one’s plan minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed … There is nothing sweeter in the world.

Our military might is the guarantor of Russia’s security and independence.

You’re having a lot of fun, right? Suppose Hillary got elected instead of Trump, you think it would be so exciting?

Between major countries, there certainly always are some common ground and points of tension.

It was not known in 1945 that we were not only entering the nuclear age, but entering a new geological epoch, what geologists call the Anthropocene, an epoch in which human activity is having severe and deleterious effects on the environment in which human and other life can survive.

There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy.

Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can’t resolve the problem of women’s pantyhose. There’s no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basic necessities of life. It was incredible and humiliating to work in such a government.

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.

I support immediate financial assistance to the newly elected Palestinian president. Now, I don’t know what those numbers will be, and I don’t know how it’s going to be framed.

So the idea that Europe should exploit Africa for Europe’s reconstruction passed without comment. This is just deeply imbedded in the consciousness of what’s sometimes called white supremacy which is an extraordinary doctrine.

You know I vowed when I became President not to talk about the loneliest toughest job in the world and I didn’t.

It is a waste of time and a pointless pursuit to speak truth to Henry Kissinger, or the CEO of General Motors, or others who exercise power in coercive institutions — truths that they already know well enough, for the most part.