Noam Chomsky

The process of shaping opinion, attitudes, and perceptions was termed the ‘engineering of consent’ by one of the founders of the modern public relations industry, Edward Bernays.

The prevailing pattern is one of indignant outrage over enemy crimes with much self-congratulatory appeal to high principle, combined with a remarkable ability “not to see” in the case of crimes for which we bear responsibility.

Descriptive grammar is an attempt to give an account of what the current system is for either a society or an individual, whatever you happen to be studying.

There’s a whole filtering process that enables people to rise through the system into managerial roles only if they’ve demonstrated that they’ve successfully internalized the values demanded by private power.

When [Lenin] became the leader, he didn’t waste much time, and Trotsky helped him, in instituting a pretty repressive regime with the basic elements of Stalinism. They moved pretty quickly to dismantle most of the organs of popular power.

The GI bill provided free education to huge numbers of people – white men overwhelmingly – who would probably never have gone to college, a great benefit to them personally and to the whole society.

The Chechnya problem is a centuries-old problem. The thing is that today, fundamentalists and terrorists are exploiting those centuries-old problems to accomplish their own objectives that have nothing to do whatsoever with the interests of Chechnya.

That’s the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody’s going to be against, and everybody’s going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything.

We need to be very careful. Democracy is the issue, and democracy ought to be the means by which we decide these issues, rather than secret negotiations resulting in a fait accompli being presented to us.

So the growth of corporate propaganda in the United States more or less parallels the growth of democracy, for quite straightforward reasons. It’s not any kind of secret. It is discussed very frankly and openly in business literature and academic social-science journals.

It’s better to be hanged for loyalty than be rewarded for betrayal.

Anarchism calls for an elimination to tyranny, all kinds of tyranny. Including the kind of tyranny that’s internal to private power concentrations. So why should we prefer it? Well I think because freedom is better than subordination. It’s better to be free than to be a slave.

The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.

Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me old,when I would NEVER call him short and fat?Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend – and maybe someday that will happen!

The international monetary fund recently [2014] did a study in which it concluded that virtually the entire profit of the big banks comes from the government insurance policy.

One of they key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace. Good people don’t go into government.

Sometimes – history needs a push.

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.

It is natural that we should always expect an Israeli attack, even when it does not threaten.

You could imagine that a democratic society would have an organization that carries out intelligence gathering functions. But that’s a very minor part of what the CIA does.

I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.