Noam Chomsky

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.

At the deepest level, the media contribute to the sense that the government is the enemy, and they suppress the sources of real power in the society, which lie in the totalitarian institutions-the corporations, now international in scale -that control the economy and much of our social life.

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.

Naturally, any conqueror is going to play one group against another. For example, I think about 90% of the forces that the British used to control India were Indians.

The description of what the Europeans did is just monstrous. The British and Dutch merchants — actually merchant warriors — moved into Asia and broke into trading areas that had been functioning for long, long periods, with pretty well-established rules.

There were gleeful reports in American military publications about the exciting spectacle of a huge flood of water wiping out the rice crops [in North Korea] on which “the Asian” depends for survival. They are very much worth reading, a useful part of historical memory.

To forgive the terrorists is up to God, but to send them to him is up to me.

But free capital mobility is a high priority for the business world: it increases profit and also provides a powerful weapon to undermine labor organizing by threat of job transfer-technically illegal, but highly effective…

The overwhelming majority of women accept the patriarchy and protect it. Traditionally, the violated wife offloads her aggression onto the daughter-in-law. Men dominate women through the agency of women themselves.

This Sarah Palin phenomenon is very curious. I think somebody watching us from Mars – they would think the country has gone insane.

It is even more so when it comes to Iraq, which is a large Arab country with scientific, material, and human resources and is able to accomplish, at the least, what Lebanon accomplished, and more.

One fundamental goal of any well-crafted indoctrination program is to direct attention elsewhere, away from effective power, its roots, and the disguises it assumes.

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.

Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.

In Downing Street they called me ‘Boss’. Civil servants would always call me ‘Prime Minister’.

In fact when the press discusses [a national healthcare program] they call it “politically impossible.” Meaning the pharmaceutical companies won’t accept it, the insurance companies won’t accept it, and so on.

Historical grammar is a study of how, say, modern English developed from Middle English, and how that developed from Early and Old English, and how that developed from Germanic, and that developed from what’s called Proto-Indo-European, a source system that nobody speaks, so you have to try to reconstruct it.

When…the people are invested with the supreme authority…they discover a multitude of wants… to satisfy these exigencies recourse must be had to the coffers of the state.

I don’t mind what Congress does, as long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.

You must obey the law, always, not only when they grab you by your special place.

..reading a book doesn’t mean just turning the pages. It means thinking about it, identifying parts that you want to go back to, asking how to place it in a broader context, pursuing the ideas. There’s no point in reading a book if you let it pass before your eyes and then forget about it ten minutes later. Reading a book is an intellectual exercise, which stimulates thought, questions, imagination.