Noam Chomsky

If the Democrats could get their act together, overcoming the schism between the donor-oriented New Democrat Party management and the increasingly activist and social democratic base, they would have a decent chance to take over Congress.

It’s not going to be easy to proceed. There are going to be barriers, difficulties, hardships, failures- it’s inevitable. But unless the process that is taking place here and elsewhere in the country and around the world, unless that continues to grow and becomes a major force in the social and political world, the chances for a decent future are not very high.

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.

If anybody thinks they should listen to me because I’m a professor at MIT, that’s nonsense. You should decide whether something makes sense by its content, not by the letters after the name of the person who says it.

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.

Universities are dependent on outside sources of support and those sources of support, such as private wealth, big corporations with grants, and the government,…they are essentially what the universities are in the middle of.

This war is not as in the past: whoever occupies a territory also imposes his own social system.

I would not use the term “totalitarian” to refer to the American system of “brainwashing under freedom.” It is, nevertheless, a remarkably effective system, a fact that is rarely recognized, analyzed or understood.

Once his wife goes to sleep it takes a minor nuclear explosion to wake her.

But facts and logic matter little. The Democrats are bent on revenge for their 2016 failure, having run such a rotten campaign that what looked like a ‘sure thing’ collapsed. Evidently, Trump’s severe assault against the common good is a lesser matter, at least to the party elite.

The executive branch tries to follow policies of plausible deniability, which means that messages are given to the CIA to do things but without a paper trail, without a record. When the story comes out later it looks as if the CIA is doing things on their own.

The business classes are very class-conscious-they’re constantly fighting a bitter class war to improve their power and diminish opposition. Occasionally this is recognized.

You cannot reform your society or institution without opening your mind.

You’re thinking of Eurpoe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe.

What is going on right now, it is unacceptable, it is wrong. However, it must be admitted that it is the result of inaccurate regulation, that was brought in recently in the sphere of energy, in energy resources.

Another way to solve the traffic problems of this country is to pass a law that only paid-for cars be allowed to use the highways.

Cromwell is just as much of a bloody dictator as was Stalin.

Those who wish to cause religious conflict are small in number but often manage to dominate the headline.

Terrorists are always a threat to someone. If we’ll be scared of them, it means they have won.

People tend to rally around power.

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