Noam Chomsky

There’s an array of terms of abuse [in the U.S.], like “Marxist,” but it doesn’t matter really, it’s a very free society. So if you’re vilified by some commissars, who cares, you go on-you do your work anyway.

In fact, in my view, if the managers of the propaganda system were more intelligent, they would allow more leeway to real dissidents and critics. Because it still wouldn’t make much of a difference, given the overwhelming weight of propaganda on the other side…

I think one can give a good argument that looting isn’t violence at all. In a sense, most of us are looters, or at any rate we are benefiting from others’ looting.

So sure, if you can find a theory that has some real principles which are of some interest and you can draw conclusions from them which you can apply to interpreting the actual world around you then sure, that’s wonderful. If there are such theories, I am happy to see them.

The Obama policies [2016] are to try to pressure Mexico to keep Central American immigrants from coming anywhere near us. Who are the Central American immigrants? These are people fleeing from the wreckage left by US government policies.

Since Jimmy Carter, religious fundamentalists play a major role in elections. He was the first president who made a point of exhibiting himself as a born again Christian. That sparked a little light in the minds of political campaign managers: Pretend to be a religious fanatic and you can pick up a third of the vote right away. Nobody asked whether Lyndon Johnson went to church every day. Bill Clinton is probably about as religious as I am, meaning zero, but his managers made a point of making sure that every Sunday morning he was in the Baptist church singing hymns.

Peace is preferable to war. But it’s not an absolute value, and so we always ask, ‘What kind of peace?’

Black lives must not matter until black people start respecting black lives and stop killing ourselves.

So for example, worker- and community- controlled enterprises are germs of a future society within the present one. And those not only can be developed, but are being developed.

If you seek the removal of freedoms from an opponent simply on the grounds that they have offended you, you have crossed a line to stand alongside tyrants who imprison, torture and kill on exactly the same justifications.

A basic principle of modern state capitalism is that costs and risks are socialized to the extent possible, while profit is privatized.

When I see people go at the President, why not try love, for one person to stand up against all odds and just hug somebody the way that Alice Johnson hugged her family when she got out of jail?.

We believe that Lebanon has been the first real experience for all the Arabs.

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

It is unacceptable that many women and girls adapt their daily lives in order to avoid being harassed on the street, public transport, and in other public places from the park to the supermarket.

You can’t be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who’s for you and who’s against you.

For many years, I have been writing and speaking about the danger of the rise of an honest and charismatic ideologue in the United States, someone who could exploit the fear and anger that has long been boiling in much of the society, and who could direct it away from the actual agents of malaise to vulnerable targets. That could indeed lead to what sociologist Bertram Gross called ‘friendly fascism’ in a perceptive study 35 years ago..

No doubt that the U.S. is a super-power capable of conquering a relatively small country, but is it able to control it?

America didn’t invent human rights. Those rights are common to all people: nations, cultures, and religions cannot choose to simply opt out of them.

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

[on Trump] I’m puzzled by that. People who do it are inflicting damage to the country’s domestic political situation, incapacitating the president and showing a lack of respect to voters who cast their ballots for him.