Noam Chomsky

While greatly honored internationally, Mandela remained on the US terrorist list until 2008, when at last a congressional resolution allowed him to enter the ‘land of the free’ without special dispensation.

That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.

The Obama policies [2016] are to try to pressure Mexico to keep Central American immigrants from coming anywhere near us. Who are the Central American immigrants? These are people fleeing from the wreckage left by US government policies.

For many years, election campaigns here have been run by the public relations industry and each time it’s with increasing sophistication. Quite naturally, the industry uses the same technique to sell candidates that it uses to sell toothpaste or lifestyle drugs.

This administration is extremely unpredictable. Trump probably has no idea what he’s going to do five minutes from now, so you can’t-literally-make predictions with much confidence.

Citizenship means every four years you put a mark somewhere and you go home and let other guys run the world. It’s a very destructive ideology.

Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be ever so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.

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.

From the point of view of the policy makers, the long-term future of the country doesn’t matter so much. What matters is just those sectors of society that sustain concentrated privilege.

Oh my goodness gracious, what you can buy off the Internet in terms of overhead photography. A trained ape can know an awful lot of what is going on in this world, just by punching on his mouse, for a relatively modest cost.

We must understand that governments cannot create real jobs. Only entrepreneurs can do that.

I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.

I understand that it’s hard for everyone, but one cannot give in to emotions… we’ll have to draw lessons from the current crisis and now we’ll have to work on overcoming it.

Advance towards socialism cannot but cause the exploiting elements to resist the advance, and the resistance of the exploiters cannot but lead to the inevitable sharpening of the class struggle.

We don’t let them have ideas. Why would we let them have guns?

Organization and education, when they interact with each other, they strengthen each other, they are mutually supportive.

The Drug War is an effort to stimulate fear of dangerous people from who we have to protect ourselves. It is also, a direct form of control of what are called “dangerous classes,” those superfluous people who don’t really have a function contributing to profit-making and wealth.

I thought being President would be easier than my old life.

Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

It is not an arrogant government that chooses priorities, it’s an irresponsible government that fails to choose.

Public officials are all right if they stay in their proper sphere and perform their proper functions but when they get greedy for wider scope and more power and money they lose their value and become parasites.