Noam Chomsky

…if you want to be praised and have your books reviewed and told how brilliant you are and get great jobs, it’s not advisable to be a dissident. It’s not impossible, and in fact the system has enough looseness in it so that it can be done, but it is not easy.

Trump himself seems to be having the time of his life. He’s constantly in the limelight, his loyal base worships his every move, he’s free to defy convention, to insult anyone he chooses, to disrupt the international economic and political order at will…

Half of Republicans deny that global warming is taking place, while 70% say that whether it is or not, humans are not responsible. Such figures would be shocking anywhere, but are remarkably so in a developed country with unparalleled resources and easy access to information.

Social media has no real impact on the propaganda model. The propaganda model was a study of the major institutions that provide the fundamental sources of news and information on which the general public relies.

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.

As a Zionist youth leader in the 1940’s, I was among those who called for a binational state in Mandatory Palestine. When a Jewish state was declared, I felt that it should have the rights of other states – no more, no less.

If the Democrats could get their act together, overcoming the schism between the donor-oriented New Democrat Party management and the increasingly activist and social democratic base, they would have a decent chance to take over Congress.

There are both things in international law: the principle of territorial integrity and right to self-determination.

Look, freedom is an overwhelming American notion. The idea that we want to see the world, the peoples of the world free is something that all of us subscribe to.

In fact, only two groups are allowed to be class-conscious in the United States. One of them is the business community, which is rabidly class-conscious…The other group is the high planning sectors of the government.

Obviously these [white-guard] emigres enjoy the right of asylum existing also in the U.S. So far as we are concerned we would never tolerate a single terrorist in our territory regardless against whom he would contemplate his crimes. Apparently the right of asylum receives broader interpretation in the U.S.A. than in our country.

Touring a segregated America – forever being stopped and harassed by white cops hurt you most ‘cos you don’t realise the damage. You hold it in. You feel empty, like someone reached in and pulled out your guts. You feel hurt and dirty, less than a person.

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.

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.

Don’t be a bottleneck. If a matter is not a decision for the President or you, delegate it. Force responsibility down and out. Find problem areas, add structure and delegate. The pressure is to do the reverse. Resist it.

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

It was sort of important for us not to deal with a specific policy change, or a specific sort of approach, but to deal with cultural change.

I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics.

But I was amazed at how organized the Palestinian election authority was, how competent they were in setting up their polling places and the poll workers they had.

[on Trump] But there are some pretty stable elements of his ideology, if you can even grant him that concept. One of them is: “Climate change is not taking place.” As he puts it: “Forget it.” And that’s almost a death knell for the species – not tomorrow, but the decisions we take now are going to affect things in a couple of decades, and in a couple of generations it could be catastrophic.

Now there were restrictions in the laws on campaign funding, but they’ve been slowly eroded. Citizens United pretty much dispensed with them. There’s still some limitations but not much.