Noam Chomsky

So, sit down strikes in the 1930’s, organization of women’s consciousness-raising groups in the ’60’s and ’70’s, anti-war activism. I mean, all of these things work. They have to be done of course. They don’t happen by themselves.

…I try to keep in mind the principle that one should not try to persuade; rather, to lay out the territory as best one can so that others can use their own intellectual powers to determine for themselves what they think is taking place and what is right or wrong.

Saudi Arabia itself has one of the most grotesque human rights records in the world. The ISIS beheadings, which shock everyone-I think Saudi Arabia is the only country where you have regular beheadings. That’s the least of it.

Earlier in the twentieth century some critics called fascism capitalism with the gloves off, meaning that fascism was pure capitalism without democratic rights and organizations.

If you go back far enough, [socialism] meant basically control of production by producers, elimination of wage labor, democratization of all spheres of life; production, commerce, education, media, workers’ control in factories, community control of communities, and so on.

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions.

Under my administration anyone who illegally crosses the border will be detained until they are removed out of our country and back to the country from which they came.

Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’. The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.

We’re rounding ’em up in a very humane way, in a very nice way. And they’re going to be happy because they want to be legalized. And, by the way, I know it doesn’t sound nice. But not everything is nice.

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.

Let’s just be smart this time. I’m looking for smart.

Artillery is the god of war.

Those who wish to cause religious conflict are small in number but often manage to dominate the headline.

My parents told me that children were taken from their families in 1941, and my mother had a child taken from her – with the goal of saving him.

The documents of Japanese fascists are just overflowing with loving kindness…when they were carrying out huge massacres in China they were bringing an “earthly paradise” to China and protecting the people from the ‘bandits’ who were trying to undermine it and so on and so forth.

The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

All political theories assume…that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ…in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest.

My first four jobs were minimum wage or close to it.

For 18 years I have resisted talking about current events. I am not going to start now.

When people grow more alienated and isolated, they begin to develop highly irrational and very self-destructive attitudes. They want something in their lives…[t]hey don’t want to be just glued to the TV set. If most of the constructive ways are cut off, they turn to other ways.