Noam Chomsky's quotes (sethmessenger.fr - Some short news to get away from it all).

#40923
If freedom of expression is limited to ideas that are right for us, it is not freedom of expression.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#40924
I try to encourage people to think independently, to challenge commonly accepted ideas. Do not take your presumptions for acquired facts. Start by taking a critical stance towards any "politically correct" idea. Force her to justify herself. Most of the time, she can't do it. Be prepared to ask questions about anything that is taken for granted. Try to think for yourself. There is a lot of information in circulation. You have to learn to judge, evaluate and compare things. You'll have to trust some things, otherwise you couldn't survive. But when it comes to important things, don't trust. As soon as you read something anonymous, beware.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#40925
If we had a real education system, we would be doing intellectual self-defense courses.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#40926
Every government needs to frighten its people and one way to do that is to wrap its operation in a s mystery. This is the traditional way of covering and protecting power: it is made mysterious and secret, above the ordinary person. Why else would people accept it?

Noam Chomsky
(Understanding Power: Volume 1)

#40927
Among those who have learned something from the eighteenth century . . . it goes without even thinking about discussing it, that the defence of the right to free expression is not limited to the ideas that one approves of, and that it is precisely in the case of ideas that we find most shocking that this right must be most vigorously defended. Supporting the right to express ideas that are generally accepted is obviously pretty much meaningless.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#40928
If you don't believe in freedom of expression for people you despise, you don't believe it at all.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#40929
"It was perfectly understood, long before George Orwell, that memory had to be suppressed. And not only the memory, but also the awareness of what is happening before our eyes, because if the population understands what we are doing on their behalf, it is likely that they will not allow it."

Noam Chomsky
(The Doctrine of Good Intentions)

#40930
Intellectuals have a problem: they have to justify their existence. But there is little about the world that is understood. Most of the things that are understood, apart from perhaps certain areas of physics, can be expressed with very simple words and very short sentences. But if you do that, you don't become famous.... people don't revere your writings. This is a challenge for intellectuals. It will be a matter of taking what is rather simple and making it look very complicated and very deep. Intellectuals interact like this. They talk to each other, and the rest of the world is supposed to admire them, treat them with respect, etc. But translate what they say into plain language, and you will often find either nothing at all, or truisms, or absurdities.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#40931
We believe that, among other functions, these media engage in propaganda that serves the interests of the powerful firms that control them by funding them and whose representatives are well placed to guide information. Such an intervention is generally quite subtle: it involves the s e l e c tion of a whole well-thinking staff and the internalization, among journalists and editors, of certain definitions of what should be printed as a priority, in accordance with the political line of the institution.

Noam Chomsky
(The fabric of public opinion. The economic policy of the American media)

#40932
To be somewhat civilized, we would have to say: -We have committed heinous crimes and we have taken advantage of them. Much of France's wealth comes from the crimes it committed against Haiti and the United States has also become richer. So we're going to pay reparations to the Haitian people. - We will then see the beginnings of civilization

Noam Chomsky
(The Doctrine of Good Intentions)

#40933
Education is not about filling a container but rather about accompanying the hatching of a plant (in other words, preparing the ground where creativity will flourish).

Noam Chomsky
(For a humanist education)

#40934
The king is naked but he does not like to be told.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#40935
True education is about pushing people to think for themselves.

Noam Chomsky
(Understanding Power: Volume 1)

#40936
"In totalitarian countries, the state decides the line to follow and then everyone has to comply. Democratic societies operate differently. The line is never stated as such, it is implied. We're sort of brainwashing. And even the passionate debates in the mainstream media are within the framework of the implied parameters agreed, which hold on the edge of many contrary points of view. The system of control of democratic societies is very effective; it instills the guideline as the air we breathe. We do not notice, and we sometimes imagine that we are in the presence of a particularly vigorous debate. Basically, it is infinitely more efficient than totalitarian systems. »

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#40939
Huarte then distinguishes three degrees of intelligence. The lowest of these is "docile intelligence," satisfying the maxim he mistakenly attributes to Aristotle, according to which there is nothing in the mind that is simply transmitted to him by the senses. The next degree, normal human intelligence, goes far beyond empirical limitation: it can "generate itself, by its own power, the principles upon which knowledge is based." [...] Thus normal human intelligence is able to acquire knowledge on its own, perhaps using the data of the senses, but continuing to build a cognitive system through concepts and principles developed on independent bases; and it is capable of generating new thoughts and finding new and appropriate ways to express them, in ways that completely transcend all training and experience. Huarte postulates a third type of intelligence, "by which some, without art or study, say subtle and surprising, yet true, things that were never seen or heard or written, or even thoughts." This refers to true creativity, the exercise of creative imagination in ways that go beyond normal intelligence and which, he believes, can involve a "mix of madness".

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#40940
The policy is designed to increase insecurity... If workers are kept insecure, they will be under control. They will not require a proper salary or the correct working conditions, nor will they require the possibility of freely associating - that is, to unionize. If we can keep the workers insecure, they will not demand too much. They'll just be delighted - it doesn't matter if they have a rotten fille... it will be considered a healthy economy.

Noam Chomsky
(Requiem for the American Dream)

#40941
"We must destroy trade unions, we must destroy the interactions between people, we must atomize them, so that they no longer care about each other. That's what's really behind the assault on pension funds."

Noam Chomsky
(The Doctrine of Good Intentions)

#40942
In recent years, corporations have been granted rights that far exceed those of individuals. According to World Trade Organization rules, corporations can demand the so-called right to "national treatment." This means that General Motors, if operating in Mexico, can apply to be treated as a Mexican firm. [...] A Mexican cannot land in New York, ask for national treatment and be fine; companies do.

Noam Chomsky
(On the control of our lives)

#40943
Using the emotional is a classic technique for short-circuiting rational analysis, and thus the critical sense of individuals. In addition, the use of the emotional register opens the door to the unconscious to implant ideas, desires, fears, impulses or behaviors...

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#40944
Before advertising took the predominant place known to it, production costs had to be covered by the selling price. As advertising grew, the newspapers that attracted it were quickly able to offer sales rates well below the actual costs. Titles that were not favoured by advertisers were at a serious disadvantage: they were among the most expensive, their sales were collapsing, their cash flow preventing them from facing the investments that would have supported sales - presentation, attractive format, distribution, etc. A media system dominated by advertising naturally tends to eliminate or marginalize bodies financed by their sales alone. By doing so, free trade offers anything but a neutral system in which s e l e c tion is based on final demand. It is the preferences of advertisers that determine the prosperity, or even the very survival of a media.

Noam Chomsky
(Making consent: Media propaganda in democracy)

#40945
It will not have escaped anyone that the democratic postulate affirms that the media are independent, determined to discover the truth and to make it known; and not that they spend most of their time giving the image of a world such as the powerful want us to represent ourselves, that they are in a position to impose the fabric of discourse, to decide what the good people have the right to see, hear or think, and to "manage" opinion with propaganda campaigns.

Noam Chomsky
(Making consent: Media propaganda in democracy)

#40946
One of the things [the power holders] want is a passive, quiet population. Therefore, one of the things you can do to make their existence uncomfortable is to be neither passive nor quiet. There are lots of ways to do it. Even simply asking questions can have a significant effect. Protests, written letters and votes can all be helpful; it depends on the situation. But there is one point of paramount importance: sustained and organized action is needed. If you participate in an event and then go home, that is something; but the people in power can handle it very well. What they can't stand is the organizations that continue their actions, the people who are always learning from the last time and who are working to do better next time. No system of power, even if it is a fascist dictatorship, is indifferent to public dissent.

Noam Chomsky
(The underside of Uncle Sam's politics)

#40947
Honesty forces us to admit that we are now just as far as Descartes was three centuries ago to understand what allows a man to speak in an innovative way, free from stimulus control, as well as adequate and consistent. This is a serious problem that the psychologist and biologist must finally address, and the existence of which cannot be denied by invoking "habit," "conditioning" or "natural s e l e c tion".

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#40948
Given the power structure in the society in which schools operate, their institutional role is primarily to train people in obedience and conformism, and to make them manipulable and indoctrinated. (...) And this process starts in kindergarten.

Noam Chomsky
(Understanding Power: Volume 1)

#40949
The neo-liberal system therefore has an important and necessary by-product: depoliticized citizens, marked by apathy and cynicism.

Noam Chomsky
(Profit before man)

#40950
Talking about world affairs is a commonplace thing. You have to work a little, read a little, think - nothing very deep. The idea that this requires special qualifications is just another scam.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#40951
By economic miracle, we mean an integrated set of beautiful macroeconomic statistics, large profits for foreign investors and luxury living for local elites; with, in small print, an increase in misery for the majority of the population.

Noam Chomsky
(In the year 501, the conquest continues)

#40952
A striking example (there is no shortage of them) can be found in the international economic order - I mean so-called trade agreements. The public, as the polls make very clear, is strongly opposed, on the whole, to the course of things, but this opposition fails to translate into fact. Elections offer no way out because decision-making centres - the minority of the wealthy - come together to establish a particular form of socio-economic order. This prevents the problem from finding its expression. The things that are being discussed only affect voters from afar: issues of people or reforms that they know will not be implemented. That is what we are discussing, not what people are interested in.

Noam Chomsky
(On the control of our lives)

#40953
What remains of democracy must now be seen as the right to choose between goods. Business leaders have long stressed the need to impose on the general public a "philosophy of futility" and a "life without objective" in order to "focus on superficial things, and in particular on what is fashionable". Overwhelmed from an early age by such propaganda, people might be able to accept a submissive and meaningless existence, and forget the ridiculous idea of taking charge of their own affairs.

Noam Chomsky
(Profit before man)

#40954
One could suggest that much of the learning theories were constructed from artifacts, analyzing an "antinatturel" mode of learning under experimental conditions built to remain outside the body's inherent abilities; no doubt, they allow us to obtain elegant curves of learning, but they tell us very little about the organisms studied. Page 193

Noam Chomsky
(Reflections on language)

#40955
Morals are at the end of the gun - and we have the guns.

Noam Chomsky
(In the year 501, the conquest continues)

#40956
The public is not sovereign in the media. Owners and managers looking for advertising decide the offer on which the public's choice will have to take place. People generally only read and look at what is directly accessible and is intensively promoted. Surveys regularly indicate that the public, although they listen to and watch what is being offered to them, would like more news, documentaries and different information, less sex and violence, and some other kind of entertainment. It seems unlikely that it would be really indifferent to citizens as to why their incomes are stagnating or even declining, while they are working harder and harder; why the medical care they have access to is as expensive as it is poor or neglect what can be perpetrated on their behalf all over the world. If they are so unaware of such topics, the propaganda model explains why: those who exercise sovereignty over the media have decided not to address such issues.

Noam Chomsky
(Making consent: Media propaganda in democracy)

#40957
The phenomena that grammar deals with are at some level explained by the rules of grammar itself and by the interaction of these rules. At a higher level, these same phenomena are explained by the principles that determine the choice of grammar on the basis of the limited and incomplete experience available to the person who acquired knowledge of the language and who built this particular grammar. The principles that determine the form of grammar and choose an appropriate grammar on the basis of certain facts constitute a subject that could, according to traditional usage, be called "universal grammar". The study of universal grammar thus understood is a study of the nature of human intellectual abilities.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#40958
In many respects, of course, American society is open and liberal values are honoured. However, as the poor, blacks and members of other ethnic minorities know only too well, the liberal veneer is very thin. As Mark Twain wrote, "It is through God's goodness that our country has three infinitely precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and prudence of not practicing either." Those who lack this caution may well pay the price.

Noam Chomsky
(What role for the state?)

#40969
No matter what you read, the important thing is how you read.

Noam Chomsky
(Understanding Power: Volume 1)

#40970
The most egregious biases in the processing of information are the result of the s e l e c tion of a staff who think what to think, who have internalized a common sense of the profession and have adapted to the constraints of owners, organizations, the market and political power. Censorship here is mainly the self-censorship of presenters and journalists subjected to their sources and the organisational constraints of the media, and also of their higher colleagues in the hierarchy, s e l e c ted to impose constraints."

Noam Chomsky
(Making consent: Media propaganda in democracy)

#40978
-- Noam, you say that Donald Trump's rise stems in part from the collapse of American society. Can you clarify your thoughts? -- Policies that have been in place for the business community for about 35 years have had devastating consequences for the majority of the population. among these, economic stagnation, the decline in living standards and the explosion of social inequalities were the harshest. This dynamic has created a climate of insecurity; many people feel isolated and powerless in the face of forces they cannot understand or influence. This collapse is not due to economic laws, but to political choices, a kind of class war declared by the rich and powerful against the working and the poor. This is what characterizes the neoliberal era, not only in the United States, but also in Europe and elsewhere.

Noam Chomsky
(Optimism against despair)

#40979
The USSR subsidized its European satellites to such an extent that they eventually became richer than their tutelary power. Historically, the Soviet bloc represents the only case of an empire whose metropolis was poorer than its colonies.

Noam Chomsky
(The Terrorist West)

#40980
Real research is always a collective activity...

Noam Chomsky
(The underside of Uncle Sam's politics)

#40981
Thus, in the aftermath of the Second World War, George Kennan - one of the most influential plannifiers, considered a great humanist - assigned his "function" to every region of the world. Africa's function would be "exploited" by Europe so that it could rebuild itself; the United States, on the other hand, had little interest in it. A year earlier, a high-level study had argued that "cooperation in the development of cheap food resources and raw materials in North Africa could contribute to the unity of Europe and provide an economic basis for its recovery" - an interesting definition of what "cooperation" is. There is no evidence in the archives that it has been suggested that Africa could "exploit" the West to "recover" from the improvement in global affairs" it had undergone in previous centuries.

Noam Chomsky
(Profit before man)

#40988
"There is enormous pressure to turn people into pathological monsters who are only interested in themselves, who have absolutely no relationship with each other, and that, therefore, one can govern and control very easily. This is what is behind the social security offensive."

Noam Chomsky
(The Doctrine of Good Intentions)

#40989
The term "anarchism" is used to refer to a wide variety of political ideas; I will rather lean for the interpretation of the libertarian left and, from this point of view, anarchism can be considered a kind of voluntary socialism, ie libertarian socialism or anarcho-unionism or anarcho-communism, in line with, say Bakounine, Kropotkin and others. They had in mind a highly organized society but built on organic units, organic communities, which generally correspond to the workplace and the neighbourhood. From these two basic units, there would be through federal agreements, a form of highly integrated social organization that could exist at the national or even international level. Decisions could be made on a very large scale but by delegates who would still be part of the organic community from which they come, to which they return and in which, in fact, they live.

Noam Chomsky
(Hope for the future. talks on anarchism and socialism)

#40990
In the case of the Central American elections, the U.S. government provided both the facts and the instruments appropriate to their "correct" analysis - the mainstream media merely relaying information and ensuring that the government line was not seriously challenged. With the attack on Pope John Paul II in May 1981 in Rome, and the accusations involving the Bulgarians and the KGB, in a conspiracy, it was the mass media that lit the fuse and played the main role in the maintenance of this burning from start to finish. The general scheme offers similarities: a frame of reference is installed around the attack that gives it the useful interpretation desired by the dominant "elite" of the time. The campaign put in place is re-listening to the public with usable propaganda that ignores other alternatives: sources suggesting other approaches to the subject are excluded from the mainstream media. Some facts are s e l e c ted and incorporated into the framework while others, which could affect the validity of the whole, are discarded. (...) What makes the "Bulgarian line" so typical as an illustration of the workings of the propaganda model is that there is nothing credible in this case which, from the beginning (i.e. long before the Rome trial) looks like a farce - taken seriously by the media until the end.

Noam Chomsky
(The fabric of public opinion. The economic policy of the American media)

#40991
Some of the most abominable atrocities have been committed in recent years in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Three to five million people are believed to have lost their lives there. Who should be pointed at? Militias. But behind the militias are multinationals and governments.

Noam Chomsky
(The Terrorist West)

#40992
Luck is even more opposed to the just theory of each language that can appear in the head of a four-year-old. And Peirce continues: "Man has a natural inclination to imagine correct theories of all species. . . . If man was not endowed with a mind adapted to his needs, he would never have been able to acquire any knowledge. At our case, it seems that knowledge of a language - a grammar - can only be acquired by a "pre-endowed" body with a severe restriction on the form of grammar.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41005
Since the end of the Second World War, Western colonialism and neocolonialism have killed 50 to 55 million people.

Noam Chomsky
(The Terrorist West)

#41006
For Aristotle, democracy must necessarily be participatory (even if it excludes women and slaves in particular) and aim for the common good. To function, it must ensure that all citizens enjoy relative equality, average but "sufficient" wealth and sustainable access to property. In other words, Aristotle considers that a regime cannot be seriously described as democratic if the inequalities between rich and poor are too great. for him, true democracy corresponds to what would be described today as a welfare state, but in a radical form that goes far beyond anything we could envisage in the 20th century. The idea that great fortunes and democracy could not coexist would make its way to the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, especially among figures such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson, who more or less assumed the implications. /.../ James Madison (fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817), far from being stupid, was aware of the problem, but, unlike Aristotle, he was working to limit democracy. In his view, the main objective of a government was to "protect the minority of the possessed from the majority." /.../ Madison therefore devised a system to prevent democracy from functioning, where power would be held by "a team of the most competent men", those to whom "the wealth of the nation" belonged. Over the years, other citizens would be relegated to the margins or divided in various ways: redistricting of electoral districts, obstacles to trade union struggles and labour cooperation, exploitation of inter-ethnic conflicts, etc. /.../ It is highly unlikely that what is now considered the "inevitable consequences of the market" can be tolerated in a truly democratic society.

Noam Chomsky
(The common good)

#41007
The child cannot know at birth which language he will learn, but he must know that his grammar must be of a predetermined form that excludes many imaginable languages. Having s e l e c ted an acceptable hypothesis, he may use the inductive evidence for corrective action, confirming or disproving his choice. Once the hypothesis is sufficiently confirmed, the child knows the language defined by this hypothesis; his knowledge therefore extends much further than his experience and actually leads him to characterize some of the experience data as incomplete and deviant.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41008
[...] The empirical problem we face today is that no one has been able to imagine an initial hypothesis rich enough to account for the child's acquisition of the grammar that we are apparently led to attribute to him when we try to explain his ability to use the language in a normal way. The idea of a common origin does nothing to explain how possible it is. In short, language is "reinvented" every time it is learned, and the empirical problem facing learning theory is how this invention took place.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41009
The most egregious biases in the processing of information are the result of the s e l e c tion of a staff who think what to think, who have internalized a common sense of the profession and have adapted to the constraints of owners, organizations, the market and political power. Censorship here is mainly the self-censorship of presenters and journalists subjected to their sources and the organisational constraints of the media, and also of their higher colleagues in the hierarchy, s e l e c ted to impose constraints.

Noam Chomsky
(Reason and freedom. On human nature, education and the role of intellectuals)

#41010
Any attack on intellectual freedom and the notion of objective truth threatens all sectors of thought in the long term.

Noam Chomsky
(Reason and freedom. On human nature, education and the role of intellectuals)

#41011
There is also a natural but unfortunate tendency to "extrapolate" from the finger of knowledge reached by careful experimental work and rigorous treatment of facts, to conclusions of much broader meaning and of great social importance. This is a serious problem. Experts have a duty to clearly mark the current limitations of their knowledge and the results they have achieved so far, and a rigorous analysis of these limitations will demonstrate, I believe, that in almost all areas of the social and behavioural sciences, the current results would not support such an "extrapolation".

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41012
Representative democracy, as it exists in the United States or Great Britain, would be criticized by an anarchist from the school I have just mentioned, for two specific reasons. Firstly because the state has a monopoly on a power that is centralized there, secondly, and critically, because representative democracy is limited to the political sphere and does not intervene in any meaningful way in the economic field. The anarchists of this lineage have always believed that democratic control of productive activity is at the very heart of all human liberation or, in the same vein, of any valid democratic practice. That is to say that as long as individuals are forced to rent themselves in the market to those who want to use them, as long as their role in production is reduced to that of anacillary tools, striking elements of coercion and oppression remain, making democracy a limited notion, even meaningless.

Noam Chomsky
(Hope for the future. talks on anarchism and socialism)

#41013
In the 20th century, the public relations industry produced an abundant literature that provides a very rich and informative set of recommendations on how to instill the "new spirit of the time", creating artificial needs or (I quote) "regulating public opinion as an army inrégiment its soldiers", by eliciting a "philosophy of futility" and inanity of existence. , or by focusing human attention on "the more superficial things that make up the bulk of fashionable consumption" (Edward Bernays). If this succeeds, then people will accept the meaningless and enslaved existences that are their lot, and they will forget this subversive idea: to take control of one's own life.

Noam Chomsky
(On the control of our lives)

#41014
The intellectual level of the currently dominant discourse deserves nothing but contempt, and its moral dress is perfectly grotesque. However, efforts must be made to make a judgment on the reactionary projects that underlie this discourse. That is what we have to do today with the ends and the means in mind. One can, as in the past, choose to be a Democrat in the sense that Jefferson intended, or to behave like an aristocrat.

Noam Chomsky
(Intellectual responsibilities)

#41015
According to Port-Royal's theory, the superficial structure corresponds only to the sound - the bodily aspect of language; but when the signal is emitted, with its superficial structure, a corresponding mental analysis intervenes, in what we might call the deep structure, a deep structure directly connected not to the sound but to the sense.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41016
I have addressed here only some of the major challenges facing humanity. If it fails to tackle it responsibly, it may well confirm the hypothesis, put forward by Ernst Mayr, a great figure in modern biology, that the appearance of a higher intelligence is an evolutionary error whose duration will have been very short.

Noam Chomsky
(Near futures)

#41017
One of the things [the power holders] want is a passive, quiet population. Therefore, one of the things you can do to make their existence uncomfortable is to be neither passive nor quiet. There are lots of ways to do it. Even simply asking questions can have a significant effect. Protests, written letters and votes can all be helpful; it depends on the situation. But there is one point of paramount importance: sustained and organized action is needed. If you participate in an event and then go home, that is something; but the people in power can handle it very well. What they can't stand is the organizations that continue their actions, the people who are always learning from the last time and who are working to do better next time. No system of power, even if it is a fascist dictatorship, is indifferent to public dissent.

Noam Chomsky
(The underside of Uncle Sam's politics)

#41018
"In fact, all political leaders in the United States should now face the death penalty for these actions, under U.S. law."

Noam Chomsky
(The Doctrine of Good Intentions)

#41019
For advertisers what matters today (as in the 19th century) is first of all the purchasing power of viewers readers, not their number.

Noam Chomsky
(The fabric of public opinion. The economic policy of the American media)

#41020
It is only in the frills of hollow discourse (or in some very marginal circles) that capitalism is considered a viable system.

Noam Chomsky
(In the year 501, the conquest continues)

#41021
"Concentration of wealth means concentration of political power. This, in turn, leads to the promotement of measures that only reinforce this trend"

Noam Chomsky
(Occupy)

#41022
Currently, in the United States, the irresponsible ideology of short-term profit is booming. The American employers have shown admirable frankness in publicly announcing that they are organizing gigantic propaganda campaigns to convince the public to ignore the current destruction of the environment, which is becoming quite difficult, even for the most blind. And as the polls show, these campaigns have had a real impact on public opinion.

Noam Chomsky
(On nuclear war and disasters...)

#41023
I imagine that any serious environmentalist would agree that saving whales does not get to the bottom of the problem, and that occupying oil rigs is at best a tactic to draw attention to deeper causes [...] In addition to being the ones who (as usual) suffer the most, the poor are also often at the origin of actions that address the true roots of the problem. Thus, at the People's Summit in Bolivia, a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth was drafted, where indigenous peoples from around the world unite against the quest for predatory and self-destructive profits led by the rich.

Noam Chomsky
(On nuclear war and disasters...)

#41024
Although rarely mentioned, the preparations carried out during the Second World War were very instructive: between 1939 and 1945, during summit meetings, the Roosevelt administration more or less organized the post-war years. The leaders knew that the United States would emerge from the conflict in a position of strength, if not triumphant. . . . These meetings served to explicitly establish certain fundamentals that were later implemented, such as the idea of "Grand Domain". In this territory that the United States was called upon to lead, no manifestation of sovereignty was to interfere with American projects - it is said openly, almost in these terms.

Noam Chomsky
(On nuclear war and disasters...)

#41025
It is postulated . . . that a grammar consists of a syntactic component that specifies an infinite set of associated deep and superficial structures and expresses the transformational relationship between these associated elements, a phonological component that gives a phonetic representation to the superficial structure and a semantic component that gives a semantic interpretation to the deep structure.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41026
To refer to a process described as "analogy" is simply to give a name to what remains a mystery.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41027
[...] If a sane human being observes the world, I don't think he can not find material for action. page 160

Noam Chomsky
(Understanding Power: Volume 2)

#41028
Whitehead once described the mentality of modern science as follows: it was forged in "the union of a passionate interest in detailed facts and an equal attachment to abstract generalization." Modern linguistics can be crudely described as passionately interested in detailed facts and philosophical grammar as also attached to abstract generalization. It seems to me that the time has come to unite these two major currents and develop a synthesis drawn from their respective achievements.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41029
If we look at what is happening in the world broadly enough, I think we could describe the situation as follows: the more capacity a state has to use violence, the greater its contempt for sovereignty - of others, it is understood. The United States is - by far - the most likely to use violence, and that is probably why enthusiasm is reaching its climax here.

Noam Chomsky
(Dominate the world or save the planet? : America in search of global hegemony)

#41030
"We must recognize that by convention (it must be insisted: by convention only) the use or threat of the use of force by the great powers are usually described as coercive diplomacy and not as a form of terrorism." While they involve, in general, "the threat and often the use of violence for purposes that should be described as terrorists if they were not great powers that use exactly the same tactics" in accordance with the literal meaning of the words. In circumstances (unimaginable, let's face it) where Western culture would be willing to adopt this literal definition, the war on terror would then take a totally different form, and would take place in detailed diagrams in a literature that is not part of the respectable works.

Noam Chomsky
(11/9: Autopsy of terrorism)

#41031
In a global economy designed to meet the interests and needs of large multinational corporations and international finance, as well as the sectors that serve them, most of the human species becomes superfluous. All these people will be sidelined if the institutional structures of power and privilege continue to function without being questioned or controlled by the popular masses.

Noam Chomsky
(The underside of Uncle Sam's politics)

#41032
Martin Buber, it seems to me, summed up the problem well: "You can't, the nature of things being what it is, expect a small tree that has been turned into a club to produce leaves."

Noam Chomsky
(What role for the state?)

#41035
How does systematic media propaganda guarantee the dominance of the vast institutions of private tyranny of transnational high finance that govern the process of "globalization"? Constructed hierarchically, gradually escaping democratic control, these institutions were born according to Chomsky from the same soil as fascism or Bolshevism, these other contemporary manifestations of totalitarianism. The globalization of the economy marks a particular historical phase of their development aimed at increasing their power and maximizing their profits, and for the most part it bears no resemblance to what we are assured it means. Free trade, to a substantial extent, is neither free nor trade-related. the market of neo-liberalism has almost nothing to do with what classical liberalism called the market and is in fact a way for the public to subsidize private tyrannies: only the poor, workers are subject to market discipline while the state participates in the dismantling of Keynesian-inspired gains made after the Second World War. From this perspective of health, education and social protection are achievements to be dismantled and privatized to increase the profits of private tyrannies. The media propaganda is there to zombify the populations so that they consent "freely" to their own killing.

Noam Chomsky
(Making consent: Media propaganda in democracy)

#41036
The main American concern was not Indochina but the "domino theory", that is, the demonstrative effect of independent initiatives, which could spread as a "rot" to Thailand - and perhaps even to Japan, which would be drawn into a "New Order" excluding the United States. They dismissed the threat by "demonstrating that a "war of liberation" can be costly, dangerous and doomed to fail," as General Maxwell Taylor, an adviser to President Kennedy, said in 1966.

Noam Chomsky
(The fabric of public opinion. The economic policy of the American media)

#41037
The most important thing, I think, was certainly the dismantling of the Bretton Woods system by the United States, England, and others in the early 1970s. This system was designed by the United States and England in the 1940s. At that time social assistance programmes and radical democratic measures enjoyed overwhelming popular support. It was partly for these reasons that the Bretton Woods system of the mid-1940s regulated exchange rates and allowed for the control of cash flows. The idea was to put an end to ruinous and harmful speculation and to limit capital flight. The reasons were well understood and clearly articulated - the free flow of capital establishes what is sometimes called a "virtual parliament" of global capital, which has veto power over government policies that it deems irrational. These include labour law, education or health programmes, or efforts to stimulate the economy; in fact, anything that is likely to help people, not to profit (and therefore irrational in the technical sense).

Noam Chomsky
(On the control of our lives)

#41038
There is a overriding principle. This principle is that the powerful and the privileged must be able to do what they want (in the name, of course, of noble goals). Its corollary is that people's sovereignty and democratic rights must disappear... (page 48)

Noam Chomsky
(On the control of our lives)

#41039
Markets do not provide the population with "what they want" but rather "what they want in the context of what pays the most for producers or which most favours their political interests".

Noam Chomsky
(Propaganda, media and democracy)

#41040
It is the responsibility of intellectuals to tell the truth and reveal lies.

Noam Chomsky
(Understanding Power: Volume 1)

#41041
Intellectuals, let us not forget, have well integrated the idea that things must look complicated. If not, what are they for?

Noam Chomsky
(The Doctrine of Good Intentions)

#41042
When the United States invades and occupies the countries bordering Iran, it is called "stabilizing"; but when it is Iran that tries to extend its influence over its border countries, it "destabilizes" the region. It's the most common formula. In other words, it means that the world belongs to the United States. And when you don't follow their orders, the owner becomes aggressive.

Noam Chomsky
(On nuclear war and disasters...)

#41043
Creating fear and hatred is, of course, a classic method of controlling populations, whether black, Jewish, homosexual, welfare champion or otherwise demonized.

Noam Chomsky
(Intellectual responsibilities)

#41044
There are no rules that "shorten" sentences, rather there are operations that form superficial structures from the underlying deep structures [...]. To show that grammatical transformations are "the simplest", it must therefore be demonstrated that the "optima" evaluation system should have ingested a chain of symbols and determine its surface surface, its underlying deep structure and the sequence of transformational operations that connect them.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41045
Thus Wilhelm von Humboldt . . . strongly maintained that we would find, underpinning all human language, a universal system that simply expresses the unique intellectual attributes of man. For this reason, it was possible to defend the rationalist idea that language is not really learned - certainly not taught - but rather develops "from within" in an essentially predetermined way, when the appropriate environmental conditions are met. You can't really teach a first language, he argued, but you can only "provide the thread in which it will develop of your own free will" through processes closer to maturation than to learning.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41046
It is not without reason that Proudhon saw in a socialism without freedom the worst form of slavery. The desire for social justice can only develop adequately and effectively when it arises from and is based on freedom and responsibility.

Noam Chomsky
(Reason and freedom. On human nature, education and the role of intellectuals)

#41047
The greatest shortcoming of the classical philosophy of the mind, rationalist or empiricist, seems to me to be its undisputed assumption that the properties and content of the mind are accessible to introspection. It is surprising how rarely this assumption has been disputed, with regard to the organization and function of intellectual faculties, even with the Freudian revolution.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41048
By the way, one of the great advantages of being a respectable intellectual is that you never need to put forward any evidence of what you say.

Noam Chomsky
(The Doctrine of Good Intentions)

#41049
A more technical way to measure the scale of globalization is to observe the convergence towards a global market, with unique prices and wages. Clearly, it did not happen.

Noam Chomsky
(Profit before man)

#41050
He wrote Bakunin in 1870: "Take the most radical of the revolutionaries and place him on the throne of all Russias or give him dictatorial powers... and before the end of the year he will be worse than the Tsar himself."

Noam Chomsky
(What role for the state?)

#41051
The capitalist model of the exploitation of humans and resources must be the subject of general criticism, because it is this model that risks dealing the coup de grace to our species.

Noam Chomsky
(Struggle or fall!)

#41052
As we have shown throughout this book, our media do not function in the manner of the propaganda system of totalitarian states. On the contrary, it allows - in fact, they encourage - fiery polemics, criticism and dissent, provided that they remain confined in faith in the system of beliefs and principles that structures any consensus of the elites: a system powerful enough that one can be imbued with it without really realizing it.

Noam Chomsky
(Making consent: Media propaganda in democracy)

#41053
I have no doubt that intellectuals influence a lot of people, but it is for better or for worse.

Noam Chomsky
(Struggle or fall!)

#41054
For ideas relating to human affairs to contribute to beneficial, necessary and urgent changes, they must be truly rooted in the current situation in order to enable us to make concrete recommendations - and to be practical in that direction. I'm sure there's no shortage of such ideas.

Noam Chomsky
(Struggle or fall!)

#41055
When they finally accepted, in 1973, a peace treaty virtually identical to the Vietnamese consensus of 1964 that they destroyed by violence, the FLN was demolished in the South and there is almost nothing left of Indochina except North Vietnam, which can then dominate the entire region - as long had been predicted by the "behind-the-scenes enraged". The media's responsibility for these tragic events is enormous: their coverage of the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the blank cheque given by Congress to the war effort is a shining example.

Noam Chomsky
(The fabric of public opinion. The economic policy of the American media)

#41056
The United States attacked South Vietnam in 1962 and extended its aggression to all of Indochina in 1965 with lasting deadly effects. Any media coverage that does not recognize these basic facts is merely propaganda seeking to excuse a terrorist attack.

Noam Chomsky
(The fabric of public opinion. The economic policy of the American media)

#41057
Again, frankness was in order: we must infuse people with a "philosophy of futility" and ensure that they are interested exclusively in "the superficial things of life, the fashion effects of consumerism". They must seek to satisfy so-called "imaginary needs." We create these needs and then get them to focus on them. That's what they're sure to do, they won't bother us anymore.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#41058
Any service we want to privatize, we will try first to untank it so that people will exclaim: we want to get rid of it! It's not working! So, for starters, you put the dog in it. Then you get popular support to cede it to the private sector. That is why public education is very under-subsidized. Teachers don't get paid enough. The resources are bad.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#41059
There is a policy formulated in the name of the well-understood interests of American domestic power, the links between the state and the business world. This policy is followed very consistently. The United States has nothing to do with the law, morality, or well-being of men. They care about maximizing certain interests.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#41060
People oppose the sharp attack on democratic rights, freedom of choice, they oppose everything being subject to categorical interests, to maximum benefit and to the domination of a very small milieu over the entire population.

Noam Chomsky
(Propaganda: Interviews with David Barsamian)

#41061
The rich are demanding competition, but what they want is a monopoly. It's blackmail.

Noam Chomsky
(In the year 501, the conquest continues)

#41062
When there are structures of authority, domination and hierarchy - someone gives orders and someone receives them - they are not self-legitimate. They have to justify themselves. The burden of proof rests with them. If you look closely, you usually see that they cannot be justified. And if they cannot, we should be dismantling them - trying to expand the realm of freedom and justice by dismantling this form of illegitimate authority.

Noam Chomsky
(Requiem for the American Dream)

#41063
Russell the "humanist conception" that considers the child in the way the gardener sees a young tree, as a being endowed with a clean nature, who can fully develop if given the earth, air and light he needs.

Noam Chomsky
(For a humanist education)

#41064
These sectors of the doctrinal system serve to distract the masses of proletarians and to consolidate basic social values: passivity, submission to authority, the sacrosanct virtue of greed and personal gain, lack of interest in others, fear of real or imagined enemies, etc. The goal is to keep the baffled herd in a state of rout. It is not helpful for them to worry about what is happening in the world. In fact, it is absolutely not desirable - if they see too much of reality, they may start wanting to change it.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#41065
Excerpts from the foreword: Chomsky's voice brings a rare glimmer of hope and optimism, in this dark era marked by unprecedented economic inequalities, the rise of authoritarianism and social Darwinism, as well as by a left that has turned its back on class struggle........... For Chomsky, however, despair is not an option. Despite the impasse in which today's world seems cornered, it should be known that resistance to oppression and exploitation has never been in vain, even in times even darker than ours. Moreover, the "counter-revolution" that Trump is inflicting on the United States has already awakened a plethora of social movements determined to stand up to this would-be autocrat. in the most powerful country on the planet, the resistance seems destined for a brighter future than in many other parts of the industrialized world. C.J. POLYCHRONIOU , March 2017 .

Noam Chomsky
(Optimism against despair)

#41066
In any country, there is always a group of people who hold real power. It is basically in the hands of the people who guide investment decisions. One of the things they want is a passive, quiet population. Therefore, one of the things you can do to make their existence uncomfortable is to be neither passive nor quiet.

Noam Chomsky
(The underside of Uncle Sam's politics)

#41067
Currently, the study of language and other higher human faculties proceeds largely as chemistry has done; it seeks to "establish a rich body of doctrine" for possible unification, but without any clear idea of how it might take place.

Noam Chomsky
(On nature and language)

#41068
If freedom of expression is limited to ideas that are right for us, it is not freedom of expression

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#41069
Intense commercial pressure has turned television news into "a pile of futility, rubbish and rubbish." Dorothy Rabinowitz

Noam Chomsky
(Propaganda, media and democracy)

#41070
In reality, the primary purpose of entertainment media is to "give advertisers what they want" rather than "the public".

Noam Chomsky
(Propaganda, media and democracy)

#41071
The Nakba took place at the location of Israel today, not in the West Bank or gaza Strip

Noam Chomsky
(Palestine)

#41072
The media, in unison and in accordance with the priorities of the elites, ensured that the American intervention could not be placed in its real context, systematically removing everything that reflected extreme violence and American aggression and giving Sandinistas the worst possible image.

Noam Chomsky
(Making consent: Media propaganda in democracy)

#41073
In Bolivia but also around the world, indigenous communities (whether they are called "First Nations", "aborigine" or "tribal" communities) have always known that, in order to hope for decent survival, we must learn to organize our societies and our lives so that the protection of "communities" - the goods that are common to all of us - becomes a major priority again. , as was often the case in traditional societies.

Noam Chomsky
(On nuclear war and disasters...)

#41074
In a way, China is regaining its position as a leading world power. It has long been the world's leading power before what the Chinese call the "century of humiliation"." Today, they are returning to the role they have traditionally played for nearly three thousand years: to be the centre of the world and to drive out the barbarians. "We're going to regain our power and the United States won't be able to do anything about it," they say.

Noam Chomsky
(On nuclear war and disasters...)

#41079
By these essential characteristics and its mode of use, language is the fundamental criterion that determines whether another organism is a being endowed with a human spirit and the human ability to think freely, to express oneself and to possess this human desire par excellence: to free oneself from the external constraints imposed by a repressive authority.

Noam Chomsky
(Reason and freedom. On human nature, education and the role of intellectuals)

#41080
The trick is not to stay isolated. If one is isolated, like Winston Smith in 1984, then sooner or later one let go, as he does in the end. In a nutshell, this is what Orwell's novel said. In fact, the whole history of control over the people boils down to this: isolating people from each other, because if you can keep them isolated long enough, you can make them believe anything. But when people come together, then a lot of things become possible. (pages 33-34)

Noam Chomsky
(Understanding Power: Volume 2)

#41081
In conclusion, I believe that there have been two truly productive research traditions that are undoubtedly of interest to those who are now involved in the study of language. The first is the tradition of philosophical grammar that flourishes from the 17th century to Romanticism, the second is the tradition that I called "structuralist", which can be misleading, which dominated the research of the century, at least until the early 1950s.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41082
Descartes also came to the conclusion from the beginning of his research that the study of the mind confronts us with a problem of quality of complexity and not only of degree of complexity. He thought he had shown that understanding and will, the two fundamental properties of the human spirit, involve abilities and include principles that even the most complex automatons cannot achieve.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41083
In these conferences, I would like to draw attention to the question: what can be the contribution of language study to our understanding of human nature? [...] At a time that was less self-aware and less compartmentalized than ours, gifted scholars and amateurs, with a wide variety of intellectual interests, points of view and backgrounds, took as a subject of study and speculation the question of whether language reflects human mental processes or whether it forms the course and character of thought.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41084
what will have marked the conscience of the world is the image of an Israel covered in blood, ready to commit war crimes at every moment and not to submit to any moral constraint. This will have serious consequences for our future, for our place in the world, for our hope for peace and our serenity. Finally, this war is also a crime against ourselves, a crime against the State of Israel

Noam Chomsky
(Palestine)

#41085
p 114: with institutional structures and an unchanged distribution of powers, how can we expect a radical change in policy - to see to any change if not for some tactical adjustments?

Noam Chomsky
(War as A foreign policy of the United States)

#41086
The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everyone's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it entertains your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about.

Noam Chomsky
(Media Control)

#41087
When George W. Bush asked , "Why do they hate us?" his misunderstanding was probably sincere. His answer, "They hate our freedom," was probably the result of what he was taught at school. Diplomatic archives and historical data, as well as specialized publications, offer more convincing answers. More than 50 years before Bush asked this nagging question, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had expressed concern about the "campaign of hatred against us" in the Arab world, which was "not from governments, but from the people." The National Security Council had set out the reasons: "The majority of Arabs consider that the United States does not want the goals of Arab nationalism to be realized. According to them, Washington seeks to protect its oil interests in the Middle East by promoting the status quo and opposing any political or economic progress." Moreover, the Council acknowledged that this perception was correct: "In the region, our economic and cultural interests have led us to draw closer to elements of the Arab world whose primary interest is to maintain good relations with the West and to maintain the status quo in their countries", thus hindering democracy and development.

Noam Chomsky
(Near futures)

#41088
True research is always a collective activity, and its results can play an important role in transforming consciousness, increasing insight and understanding, and paving the way for constructive action.

Noam Chomsky
(The underside of Uncle Sam's politics)

#41089
Terrorism is the exercise of violence against civilian populations, whether perpetrated by a well-organized band of Muslim extremists or by the most powerful state in the world.

Noam Chomsky
(Power and terror, interviews after 9/11)

#41090
The public is not sovereign in the media. Owners and managers looking for advertising decide the offer on which the public's choice will have to take place. People generally only read and look at what is directly accessible and is intensively promoted. Surveys regularly indicate that the public, although they listen to and watch what is being offered to them, would like more news, documentaries and different information, less sex and violence, and some other kind of entertainment. It seems unlikely that it would be really indifferent to citizens as to why their incomes are stagnating or even declining, while they are working harder and harder; why the medical care they have access to is as expensive as it is poor or neglect what can be perpetrated on their behalf all over the world. If they are so unaware of such topics, the propaganda model explains why: those who exercise sovereignty over the media have decided not to address such issues.

Noam Chomsky
(Making consent: Media propaganda in democracy)

#41091
We are already in the phase of the sixth mass extinction. This means that we human beings are on the verge of destroying living species on a scale as vast as the extinction of species, sixty-five million years ago - the date of the fifth mass extinction, when a gigantic meteorite struck the planet, thus ending the reign of dinosaurs. Today, the predictions for humanity and this planet are very pessimistic. Serious action is needed to remedy this situation.

Noam Chomsky
(Struggle or fall!)

#41092
The idea of a lack of an alternative to the status quo is more incongruous than ever at a time like ours, when extraordinary technologies exist to improve the human condition. It is true that the way to create a reliable, free and human post-capitalist order is still unclear, and that this very notion has something utopian. But with every historical progress, from the abolition of slavery to decolonization, the idea that it was "impossible" had to be overcome, since it had never been done before. And, as Chomsky points out, it is to organized political activism that we owe the democratic rights and freedoms we enjoy today - universal suffrage, civil rights, women's rights, trade unions... Even if a post-capitalist society still seems unattainable, we know that political activity can make the world in which we live more humane. By gradually getting closer to this goal, perhaps we will once again be able to think about building a political economy based on cooperation, equality, autonomy and individual freedom.

Noam Chomsky
(Propaganda, media and democracy)

#41093
I think that, at least in technologically advanced Western societies, we can avoid the thankless, unnecessary and, in a certain margin, share this privilege with the population, the centralized autocratic control of economic institutions - I mean private capitalism as well as state totalitarianism or the various mixed forms of state capitalism that exist here or there - has become a destructive vestige of history. All these vestiges must be eliminated in favour of direct participation in the form of workers' councils or other free associations that individuals themselves constitute in the context of their social existence and productive work. A federated system, decentralized of free associations, incorporating economic and social institutions, would constitute what I call anarcho-unionism, it seems to me that it is an appropriate form of social organization for an advanced technological society, in which human beings are not transformed into instruments, into cogs of the mechanism. No social necessity requires that human beings be treated as links in the production chain, we must overcome this by a society of freedom and free association, or the creative impulse inherent in human nature can be fully realized in the way it decides. [Noam Chomsky]

Noam Chomsky
(On Human Nature: Understanding Interlude Power)

#41094
Television presents events as a sanctimonious play, a dramatic dilemma between the good, represented by the American offensive of 1966, and the evil personified by Hanoi.

Noam Chomsky
(The fabric of public opinion. The economic policy of the American media)

#41095
What remains of democracy must now be seen as the right to choose between goods. Business leaders have long stressed the need to impose on the general public a "philosophy of futility" and a "life without objective" in order to "focus on superficial things, and in particular on what is fashionable". Overwhelmed from an early age by such propaganda, people might be able to accept a submissive and meaningless existence, and forget the ridiculous idea of taking charge of their own affairs.

Noam Chomsky
(Profit before man)

#41096
It is no exaggeration to say that the attempt to take control of our own lives is an essential feature of the history of the world, which has experienced a crescendo in recent centuries, marked by dramatic changes in both human relations and in the world order. (page 7)

Noam Chomsky
(On the control of our lives)

#41097
Democracy is a system in which people are spectators, not actors. At regular intervals, they have the right to put a ballot in the ballot box, to choose someone in the class of chiefs to lead them. Then they are supposed to go home and go about their business, consume, watch TV, cook, but above all do not disturb.

Noam Chomsky
(Two hours of lucidity: Interviews with Denis Robert and Weronika Zarachowicz)

#41098
The fate of the most vulnerable underlines the distance that separates us from what might be called "civilization."

Noam Chomsky
(Profit before man)

#41099
Reformation is one of those words that should put the chip in your ear. The changes are called "reforms" if the powerful support them. Thus, Pol Pot has changed many things in Cambodia, but we are not talking about "reforms". The word belongs to Orwell's list. We use it for the changes we are supposed to support. The so-called "educational reforms" should be evaluated pending what is considered good in the field of education, but just because we use the term "reforms" does not necessarily mean that these changes will be positive. Much of it is destructive.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#41100
As Biko said, the fantastic success of the oppressors has been to instill their arguments in such a way that they constitute the point of view from which one looks at the world. This is sometimes done very consciously, as in the communications industry. Other times, it's a kind of routine, the way we live.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#41101
It is a great goal, perfectly aware, of industries interested in the definition of thoughts and attitudes. Their concern, their commitment, and they admit it, is to keep people isolated, atomized as you say. There is a good reason for that. As long as people are alone, they are not able to understand much. If they are together, they begin to exchange opinions, to question themselves and to learn.

Noam Chomsky
(Propaganda: Interviews with David Barsamian)

#41102
The anarchist ideal, in any form, has always tended, by definition, towards a dismantling of state power. I share this ideal. Yet it often comes into direct conflict with my immediate goals, which are to defend, or even strengthen certain aspects of the authority of the state..... Today, within the framework of our societies, I believe that the strategy of sincere anarchists must be to defend certain institutions of the state against the onslaught they suffer, while trying to force them to open up to a wider and more effective popular participation. This approach is not undermined from the inside by an apparent contradiction between strategy and ideal; It naturally proceeds from a practical prioritization of ideals and an equally practical evaluation of the means of action.

Noam Chomsky
(We anarchism)

#41103
"In times of recession, we need growth, not austerity"

Noam Chomsky
(Occupy)

#41104
"America stands where it has always done - against aggression, against those who want to use force to replace the supremacy of law." These are the words of President Bush, the invader of Panama and the only head of state to have been convicted by the International Court of Justice for "illegal use of force".

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#41105
What do you do when you fall prey to a virus? First, you destroy it, then you vaccinate its potential victims, so that the disease cannot spread. That's basically the American strategy in the third world. If possible, it is advisable to entrust the destruction of this virus to the local military. If they don't, you have to do it by bringing your own strength. It's extremely expensive and it's inelegant, but sometimes you have to deal with it. Vietnam was one of those places where we had to deal with it.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#41106
This is entirely predictable, as an endless series of studies shows. A brutal tyrant crosses the line between the admirable friend and the "bandit" or the "scum" when he commits the crime of independence. A common mistake is not just robbing the poor - which is fine - but starting to take care of the affairs of the privileged: it always ends up eliciting hostility from business people.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#41107
Brazil is an instructive case. It has so many natural resources that it should be one of the richest countries on the planet, and it also enjoys significant industrial development. But thanks in large part to the coup d'état of 1964 and the much-praised "economic miracle" that followed (to say nothing of torture, assassinations and other means of "population control"), the current situation of many Brazilians is probably on an equal footing with ethiopia - and is much more serious, for example, than in Eastern Europe.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#41108
Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines that everyone says, or you tell the truth.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#41109
The best journalists are generally very aware of the factors that shape the media product, and they seek to take advantage of the openings that arise. As a result, much can be learned through a critical and skeptical reading of what the media produces.

Noam Chomsky
(The underside of Uncle Sam's politics)

#41110
This formulation may have occasionally led to the idea that there was some asymmetry in grammatical theory, in the sense that grammar would take the speaker's point of view rather than that of the listener; that it would focus on the process of producing statements rather than the reverse process of analyzing and reconstructing the structure of the statements given. P54

Noam Chomsky
(Syntactic structures)

#41111
The goal [...]: to lead the stupid masses to a world that their inability to understand prevents them from conceiving. [...] according to this theory [of Lippman], only a small elite ... can understand what the common good is and know what is important to the community, since these notions "completely escape public opinion".

Noam Chomsky
(Propaganda, media and democracy)

#41112
The most damning accusation to the news media is that the more information a person consumes in the commercial media, the less able he or she is to understand public or political affairs.

Noam Chomsky
(Propaganda, media and democracy)

#41113
Not so long ago, the book industry played an important role in stimulating culture and public debate. Now, it has swapped much of this function for the development of the ideas and interests of its owners.

Noam Chomsky
(Propaganda, media and democracy)

#41114
For guatemala's elections, the media strictly stead ran to US officials, official observers, leading candidates and generals on sources. The spokesmen of the insurgents - what would have been called "the main opposition force" in Nicaragua - and those of small parties, popular organizations, churches, human rights organizations and other ordinary citizens were totally ignored by the media.

Noam Chomsky
(Making consent: Media propaganda in democracy)

#41115
the past, where we would focus our attention on Zionism as a historical phenomenon, the present, where we would question in particular the relevance of applying the model of apartheid to Israel and the effectiveness of the BDS campaign as an important strategy of solidarity with the Palestinian people, and the future, where we would balance the two-state solution with that of a state

Noam Chomsky
(Palestine)

#41116
It is useful not to forget: wherever we turn, there is rarely a shortage of noble ideals to accompany the use of force.

Noam Chomsky
(Dominate the world or save the planet? : America in search of global hegemony)

#41117
Without self-thinking, skepticism could be reduced to a one-sided posture of refusal. It may be fair not to accept the dominant position, but this refusal can only have value if it is based on reasoned, reasoned analysis, and accompanied by sensible alternatives.

Noam Chomsky
(On nuclear war and disasters...)

#41118
China has gradually taken the lead in high-tech photovoltaics and now dominates the international market. The U.S. lags behind in intellectual innovation is such that after a visit to the site Steven Chu, U.S. Secretary of Energy, described Suntech's site as a state-of-the-art automated plant, where the world's best-performing photovoltaic cells are manufactured.

Noam Chomsky
(On nuclear war and disasters...)

#41119
To hear the most eloquent supporters of neo-liberalism, one would think that they are doing enormous services to the poor, and to everyone, when they apply their policies in favour of a privileged minority

Noam Chomsky
(Profit before man)

#41120
It is those who actually work who must determine working conditions and schedules as well as the distribution of production. Industry captains must be s e l e c ted. And chosen to serve, not to order. It is for the well-being of all that the work of all must be determined. That is democracy.

Noam Chomsky
(Intellectual responsibilities)

#41121
"Those who work in factories should be the owners," the workers said, without any intellectual needing to blow it to them.

Noam Chomsky
(Intellectual responsibilities)

#41122
Black men are considered a criminal population, concludes criminologist William Chambliss, based on numerous studies, including direct observation by students and faculty as part of a joint project with the D.C. police. But that's not entirely accurate: criminals are supposed to have constitutional rights; however, as this study and many others show, this is not the case for the communities concerned, which are treated as a population under military occupation.

Noam Chomsky
(Intellectual responsibilities)

#41123
The term "national defence" is a bad joke that should border on ridicule among people who still have a little respect for themselves. The United States does not face any threat but spends a lot on "defence" (as much as the rest of the world). Military spending, however, is no joke. Apart from ensuring a particular form of "stability" in managing our country's "permanent interests," the Pentagon is useful in providing for Gingrich and his wealthy voters, so that they can continue to fulminate against the welfare state, which pours public funds into their pockets.

Noam Chomsky
(Intellectual responsibilities)

#41124
The American-led struggle for justice is marred by injustices such as slavery and the exploitation of African Americans, as well as the near-destruction of Aboriginal Indian civilizations.

Noam Chomsky
(Intellectual responsibilities)

#41125
Classes are not just a way of differentiating relationships to ownership, with some owning the capital and others having only their work force. In fact, between capital and work are what I call coordinators; people to whom their position in the economic system confers a relative monopoly on information and some control over their own economic role as well as, in many cases, that of others.

Noam Chomsky
(Intellectual responsibilities)

#41126
By continuing the kind of research that now seems feasible and drawing attention to some of the problems that are now available to the study, we will be able to decipher in detail the elaborate and abstract assessments that partly determine the nature of perceived things and the character of acquired knowledge -those specific ways of interpreting the phenomena that are , to a large extent, beyond the reach of our consciousness and control and which may belong only to man.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41127
The real awareness comes from experience and confrontation with the world. You don't realize first and then act, you become aware by acting. page 151

Noam Chomsky
(Understanding Power: Volume 2)

#41128
Simply incorporating the idea that certain things are not good to say or think is an important part of education. And if you don't learn that, you'll usually be sidelined from institutions at some point. (page 17)

Noam Chomsky
(Understanding Power: Volume 2)

#41129
A major problem is that the surface structure itself generally gives very little indication of the meaning of the sentence. For example, there are many ambiguous sentences in a way that the superficial structure does not indicate. Consider the sentence 4:4 - I disapprove of John's drinking. This sentence may refer either to the fact that John drinks in the moment or to his character. Ambiguity is resolved in different ways in sentences 5 and 6:5- I disapprove of John's drinking the beer. 6- I disapprove of John's excessive drinking. It is clear that grammatical processes are implicit.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41130
There is still the argument of Louis Racine, son of the playwright, struck by the idea that this: "If the beasts had a soul and were capable of feelings, would they remain insensitive to the affront and injustice that Descartes made to them? Wouldn't they rather be angry at the leader and the sect that demeaned them in this way? It should be added, I suppose, that Louis Racine was regarded by his contemporaries as living proof that a brilliant father cannot have a brilliant son.

Noam Chomsky
(Language and Thought)

#41141
The "accelerated pacification campaign" that follows the Tet offensive is an operation of mass killings that demolishes the FLN and its peasant base. It kills tens of thousands and ruins what is left of the country. The southern part of North Vietnam is reduced to a lunar landscape; Laos is subject to one of the heaviest bombings in history that destroys a rural society that has nothing to do (as Washington acknowledges) with the war in South Vietnam. The United States also bombarded Cambodia with invading and destroying much of it, rallying the peasants to the cause of the Khmer Rouge, who were still a marginal force.

Noam Chomsky
(The fabric of public opinion. The economic policy of the American media)

#41142
The delayed attention paid to the My Lai massacre is part of a subtle form of concealment of atrocities. (...) Arbitrarily exceptional in order to divert attention from other possible investigations, its dramatization has even served to demonstrate that America has a conscience in the face of the enemy's provocations.

Noam Chomsky
(The fabric of public opinion. The economic policy of the American media)

#41143
But the United States has not achieved its ultimate goal. They did not turn Vietnam into a imitation Philippines, i.e. a colony. The war is therefore considered a failure. But they still achieved their main goals. Jimmy Carter, in what should be considered one of the most incredible comments of any head of state anywhere, said at a press conference that we have no debt to Vietnam because "the destruction has been mutual".

Noam Chomsky
(Propaganda: Interviews with David Barsamian)

#41144
This theory, attributed to Nixon, is that we cannot convince people, and we are powerful. It is therefore fruitful to adopt the mask of a violent, vindictive, irrational and hysterical nation. We must use our nuclear weapons arsenal for this purpose. (...) This could be part of the explanation for the bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan or Iraq, so as to most brazenly insult the United Nations. Let them know that we are uncontrollable and vindictive: they better be careful.

Noam Chomsky
(Source inconnue)

#41145
I misjudged, they saw right. But as far as I know, it was basically like playing a coin toss.

Noam Chomsky
(Understanding Power: Volume 1)

#41146
I first wrote to Noam Chomsky around 1980. To my surprise, he replied. We did our first interview four years later. We have made dozens of them since then, which have linked them to a whole series of books, as well as to radio shows. The collections of conversations have sold by hundreds of thousands, all the more remarkable because they have not enjoyed any media launch or journalistic review, even on the left.

Noam Chomsky
(Propaganda: Interviews with David Barsamian)

#41147
By the 1930s, faith in the viability of capitalism had all but disappeared, as developed countries were moving towards some form of integrated economic system in the state.

Noam Chomsky
(In the year 501, the conquest continues)

#41148
None of the capitalist states accepts the principle of the free movement of labour, a prerequisite for free market theory.

Noam Chomsky
(In the year 501, the conquest continues)

#41149
"Educating citizens is not just dictating what they should think: it is getting them to do their own learning"

Noam Chomsky
(Occupy)

#41150
citizens are against the deficit: for them, the real problem is unemployment"

Noam Chomsky
(Occupy)

Seth Messenger : Noam Chomsky's quotes

Noam Chomsky said :