Noam Chomsky

Military spending scarcely involves the public, but social spending does, and has a democratizing effect. For reasons like these, military spending is much preferred.

I don’t see why it’s more violent for a person to go into a store and take what’s there than it is for a person who has money that was achieved by violent methods to go into the store and take what’s there by handing over the money.

These are fashionable people who call themselves philosophers.

Pick the topic you like: the Middle East, international terrorism, Central America, whatever it is, the picture of the world that’s presented to the public has only the remotest relation to reality. The truth of the matter is buried under edifice after edifice of lies upon lies. It’s all been a marvelous success from the point of view in deterring the threat of democracy, achieved under conditions of freedom, which is extremely interesting. It’s not like a totalitarian state, where it’s done by force. These achievements are under conditions of freedom.

I am not a committed pacifist. I would not hold that it is under all imaginable circumstances wrong to use violence, even though use of violence is in some sense unjust. I believe that one has to estimate relative justices. But the use of violence and the creation of some degree of injustice can only be justified on the basis of the claim and the assessment-which always ought to be undertaken very, very seriously and with a good deal of scepticism that this violence is being exercised because a more just result is going to be achieved.

When [Lenin] became the leader, he didn’t waste much time, and Trotsky helped him, in instituting a pretty repressive regime with the basic elements of Stalinism. They moved pretty quickly to dismantle most of the organs of popular power.

No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Look at those hands, are they small hands? And, [Republican rival Marco Rubio] referred to my hands: ‘If they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.

The system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.

The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would … assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialisation of production. In particular, the process of technical invention and improvement becomes socialised.

If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven’t done much today.

You don’t get to be a respected intellectual by uttering truisms in monosyllables.

What is a Rechtsstaat? It is obedience to the existing law.

We have more people than ever using foodbanks, we have a greater number of people being homeless and many people in housing stress.

It is difficult to say which is more menacing. But both of [points of war danger -Japan and Germany] exist and both are smoldering. In comparison with these two principal focal points of the war danger, the Italo-Ethiopian war represents an episode.

A man’s eyes should be torn out if he can only see the past

The common good is the aspiration of all of us.

You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.

An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.