Noam Chomsky

The death penalty can be tolerated only by extreme statist reactionaries who demand a state that is so powerful that it has the right to kill.

One who views Latin America today [1981] might well assume that Hitler had won the war, though in fact it is American liberalism that a bears a major responsibility for the plague of terror and torture regimes that often mimic the Nazis.

Karl Marx said, ‘The task is not just to understand the world but to change it.’ A variant to keep in mind is that if you want to change the world you’d better try to understand it. That doesn’t mean listening to a talk or reading a book, though that’s helpful sometimes. You learn from participating. You learn from others. You learn from the people you’re trying to organize. We all have to gain the understanding and the experience to formulate and implement ideas.

Some of the most moving experiences I’ve had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.

The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the [“The US Donor Relief Act of 2017”] will add $1 trillion to deficits over the next decade. Virtually every economist generally agrees. But not 80 percent of Republican voters…

…if you ask me whether or not I’m an atheist, I wouldn’t even answer. I would first want an explanation of what it is that I’m supposed not to believe in, and I’ve never seen an explanation.

Hamas is regularly described as ‘Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.’ One will be hard put to find something like ‘democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus’-blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

To pay more is the easy way. In fact, the solution possibilities to the problem are many.

See that the President, the Cabinet and staff are informed. If cut out of the information flow, their decisions may be poor, not made, or not confidently or persuasively implemented.

Russia needs a strong state power and must have it. But I am not calling for totalitarianism.

Israel and its US backers would no doubt prefer for the Palestinian leadership to be immobilized in endless negotiations, while the concrete work of colonization proceeds – the traditional Zionist practice for a century.

The kind of work that should be the main part of life is the kind of work you would want to do if you weren’t being paid for it. It’s work that comes out of your own internal needs, interests and concerns.

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.

Individual liberty…demonstrate[s] that some manners of living are more successful than others.

Already under Obama, the nuclear modernization programs had reached the level where they were posing a literal first-strike threat to Russia. Trump is escalating it, even more modernization of extremely dangerous forces, also significantly lowering the threshold for nuclear war.

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

The big transnationals want to reduce freedom by undermining the democratic functioning of the states in which they’re based, while at the same time ensuring the government will be powerful enough to protect and support them.

When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’

About 70% of the public, the lowest 70% on the income scale, are pretty much disenfranchised. Their attitudes have no detectable influence on the policies of their own representatives. As you move up the scale you get a bit more influence. When you get to the top, policy is made.

I want good people to come here from all over the world, but I want them to do so legally. We can expedite the process, we can reward achievement and excellemce, but we have to respect the legal process. And those people who take advantage of the system and come here illegally should never enjoy the benefits of being a resident–or citizen–of this nation. So I am against any path to citizenship for undocumented workers or anyone else who is in this country illegaly. They should–and need to–go home and get in line.