1,450 Quotes by Noam Chomsky

NATO bombing of Serbia was undertaken by the ‘international community,’ according to consistent Western rhetoric—although those who did not have their heads buried in the sand knew that it was opposed by most of the world, often quite vocally. Those who do not support the actions of wealth and power are not part of ‘the global community.

From anti-semite to self-hating jew, all in one day

[...] dictatorship, the most extreme form of tyranny, can never lead to social liberation.

It's very important for institutions of concentrated power to keep people alone and isolated: that way they're ineffective, they can't defend themselves against indoctrination, they can't even figure out what they think.

Passivity may be the easy course, but it is hardly the honorable one.

The trick is not to be isolated―if you're isolated, like Winston Smith in 1984, then sooner or later you're going to break, as he finally broke. That was the point of Orwell's story. In fact, the whole tradition of popular control has been exactly that: to keep people isolated, because if you can keep them isolated enough, you can get them to believe anything. But when people get together, all sorts of things are possible.

It's quite standard for those who hold the clubs to say: "Forget about everything that happened and let's just go on from here." In other words, "I've got what I want, and out forget about what your concerns are. I'll just take what I want.

Victors do not investigate their own crimes, so that little is known about them...

The idea that we must choose between the method of "winning hearts and minds" and the method of shaping behavior presumes that we have the right to choose at all. This is to grant us a right that we would surely accord to no other power. Yet the overwhelming body of American scholarship accords us this right.