Noam Chomsky

Usually, by and large, the U.S. foreign policy, like other major states, is driven by the dominant domestic forces. That’s kind of natural. And the dominant domestic forces are, of course, the corporate sector. That’s not in question.

The rascal multitude are the proper targets of the mass media and a public education system geared to obedience and training in needed skills, including the skill of repeating patriotic slogans on timely occasions.

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.

Take a look at the British conquest of Ireland, the earliest of the Western colonial conquests. It was described in the same terms as the conquest of Africa. The Irish were a different race. They weren’t human. They weren’t like us. We had to crush and destroy them.

[The general population – “the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders”] are allowed to vote every once in a while, pick out one of us smart guys. But then they are supposed to go home and do something else like watch football or whatever it may be.

Large corporate advertisers on TV will rarely sponsor programs that engage in serious criticisms of corporate activities, such as the problem of environmental degradation, the workings of the military-industrial complex, or corporate support of and benefits from 3rd World tyrannies.

On economic policy, in particular, the striking thing about the leadership contest was that every candidate other than Mr. Corbyn essentially supported the Conservative government’s austerity policies. … The Corbyn upset isn’t about a sudden left turn on the part of Labour supporters. It’s mainly about the strange, sad moral and intellectual collapse of Labour moderates.

Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.

The devastating punch we took on September 11th still reverberates throughout American society.

But we’re at a place in our political history when passing legislation through the House with bipartisan support is considered by some folks a greater evil than the problem it’s intended to solve.

[Overseas] we build a school, we build a road, they blow up the school, we build another school, we build another road, they blow them up, we build again. In the meantime we can’t get a f**king school in Brooklyn.

I do not feel that we should set up people as ‘models’; rather actions, thoughts, principles.

The Creel [propaganda] Commission…succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist [U.S.] population into a hysterical, war-mongering population which wanted to destroy everything German, tear the Germans limb from limb, go to war and save the world.

Nobody and nothing will stop Russia on the road to strengthening democracy and ensuring human rights and freedoms.

[on his SNL performance wearing a MAGA hat] They bullied me backstage. They said don’t go out there with that hat on. They bullied me backstage. They bullied me.

Usually, by and large, the U.S. foreign policy, like other major states, is driven by the dominant domestic forces. That’s kind of natural. And the dominant domestic forces are, of course, the corporate sector. That’s not in question.

The European reaction to Obama is a European delusion.

Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.

When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is, when they go low, we go high.

In the history of modern socialism this is a phenomenon, that the strife of the various trends within the socialist movement has from national become international.