1,450 Quotes by Noam Chomsky

Ever since I’ve had any political awareness, I’ve felt either alone or part of a tiny minority.

If you don’t like what someone has to say, argue with them.

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.

Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.

Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It’s something you have to find out for yourself.

People don’t talk to each other. You’re alone with your television set or internet. But you can’t have a functioning democracy without what sociologists call “secondary organizations,” places where people can get together, plan, talk and develop ideas. You don’t do it alone.

In my own professional work I have touched on a variety of different fields. I’ve done work in mathematical linguistics, for example, without any professional credentials in mathematics; in this subject I am completely self-taught, and not very well taught.

One of the most interesting reactions to come out of 1968 was in the first publication of the Trilateral Commission, which believed there was a ‘crisis of democracy’ from too much participation of the masses.

Every predecessor has used mercenaries, often drawn from the country that they’re attacking, like England ran India with Indian mercenaries. You take them from one place and send them to kill people in the other place. That’s the standard way to run imperial wars.