1,450 Quotes by Noam Chomsky

Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that’s so deep in history that there’s no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.

When I look at public opinion, I’m not far out of the mainstream. I’m in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I’ve ever said.

The general public are not even aware of major decisions that will determine their fate, hence are in no position to influence them.

The fact is that if you have not developed language, you simply don’t have access to most of human experience, and if you don’t have access to experience, then you’re not going to be able to think properly.

Nothing in these abstract economic models actually works in the real world. It doesn’t matter how many footnotes they put in, or how many ways they tinker around the edges. The whole enterprise is totally rotten at the core: it has no relation to reality.

It doesn’t matter what we cover, it matters what you discover.

One might ask why tobacco is legal and marijuana not. A possible answer is suggested by the nature of the crop.

There’s a War Crimes Act in the United States passed by a Republican Congress in 1996, which says that grave breaches of the Geneva Convention are subject to the death penalty. And that doesn’t mean the soldier that committed them – that means the commanders.

Settler colonialism, which is what this is, is by far the worst kind of imperialism, because it gets rid of the native population. Other kinds of imperialism exploit them, but settler colonialism eliminates them, “exterminates” them, to use the words of the Founding Fathers.