Noam Chomsky

Social Security is actually in pretty good shape despite what everybody screams about. But if you can defund it, it won’t be in good shape. And there is a standard technique of privatization, namely defund what you want to privatize.

As long as people are marginalized and distracted [they] have no way to organize or articulate their sentiments, or even know that others have these sentiments. People assume that they are the only people with a crazy idea in their heads.

The history of US foreign policy, especially after World War II, is pretty much defined by the subversion and overthrow of foreign regimes, including parliamentary regimes, and the resort to violence to destroy popular organizations…

As a research tool, the internet is invaluable.

Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours.

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.

I think if this country gets any kinder or gentler, it’s literally going to cease to exist.

Power that isn’t really justified by the will of the governed should be dismantled.

We don’t want an America that is closed to the world. What we want is a world that is open to America.

Let us not forget that revolutions are accomplished through people, although they be nameless. Materialism does not ignore the feeling, thinking, and acting man, but explains him.

As soon as one identifies, challenges and overcomes illegitimate power, he or she is an anarchist. Most people are anarchists. What they call themselves doesn’t matter to me.

We, therefore, here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends in this hour of tragedy, and we, like them, will not rest until this evil is driven from our world.

When the interests of the privileged and powerful are the guiding commitment of both political factions, people who do not share these interests tend to stay home.

I see that not everyone in the West has understood that the Soviet Union has disappeared from the political map of the world and that a new country has emerged with new humanist and ideological principles at the foundation of its existence.

… This phenomenon has its place in the world, and it’s developing. We need to monitor and analyze what’s going on thoroughly. And at some stage we will need to look at how we can take part in this process, how we can use it to avoid all sorts of restrictions in the sphere of international financial activity, among other things.

Nations do not think, they only feel. They get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought – by force of circumstances, not argument – to reconcile itself to any kind of government or religion that can be devised; in time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later it will prefer them and will fiercely fight for them.

I can only go one way. I’ve not got a reverse gear.

Although some people felt Adolf Hitler was bad, he was a great man and a real conqueror whose name would never be forgotten.

Individual liberty…demonstrate[s] that some manners of living are more successful than others.

If he gave an assignment, he didn’t really care how it was done or who did it or what problems they had. It just had to get done, and that was that.