Noam Chomsky

Israel and its US backers would no doubt prefer for the Palestinian leadership to be immobilized in endless negotiations, while the concrete work of colonization proceeds – the traditional Zionist practice for a century.

The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.

Anarchists try to identify power structures. They urge those exercising power to justify themselves. This justification does not succeed most of the time.

I would question the use of something as simplistic as IQ to come to any conclusions regarding human affairs.

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.

Exaggerating slightly, in totalitarian countries the state decides the official line and everyone must then comply. Democratic societies operate differently. The line is never presented as such, merely implied. This involves brainwashing people who are still at liberty.

Africa shares with Asia a common background of colonialism, of exploitation, of discrimination, of oppression. At Bandung, African and Asian States dedicated themselves to the liberation of their two continents from foreign domination and affirmed the right of all nations to develop in their own way, free of any external interference.

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.

The social system is taking on a form in which finding out what you want to do is less and less of an option because your life is too structured, organised, controlled and disciplined.

No one’s asked me. If somebody felt there was a job I could actually do I would consider it — not out of any ambition to be in Washington, but I do want to rise to the occasion of serving there if warranted.

Major terrorists are provided refuge in Florida. The late Bosch is one, Orlando Bosch. Posada is another. You remember there was something called the Bush Doctrine, Bush II: A country that harbors terrorists is the same as the terrorists themselves.

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.

I believe something is very wrong with the history of our country and how we have messed up the African National Congress.

I don’t see why it’s more violent for a person to go into a store and take what’s there than it is for a person who has money that was achieved by violent methods to go into the store and take what’s there by handing over the money.

Social media has no real impact on the propaganda model. The propaganda model was a study of the major institutions that provide the fundamental sources of news and information on which the general public relies.

A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

According to what you’re taught in economics courses, our system is based on free markets with entrepreneurial initiative and rational choices by informed consumers. Well, the reality is radically different.

I don’t read books by people who have betrayed the Motherland.

If a prospective Presidential approach can’t be explained clearly enough to be understood well, it probably hasn’t been thought through well enough. If not well understood by the American people, it probably won’t “sail” anyway. Send it back for further thought.

I say again that I am an atheist. I do not believe in God.

Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialisation of production. In particular, the process of technical invention and improvement becomes socialised.