1,450 Quotes by Noam Chomsky

Oggi come ieri, non c’è motivo di pensare che siamo governati da leggi misteriose e sconosciute, anziché da semplici decisioni prese all’interno di istituzioni che sono soggette alla volontà umana, istituzioni umane, che devono dimostrare la propria legittimità e se non superano l’esame possono essere sostituite da altre più libere e più giuste, com’è accaduto spesso in passato.

the ones who are running the world economy have protected themselves very strongly from market discipline. the neo-liberal system is an attack, in my view, both on the market, and on democracy.

Beware of the people of power, and avarice, and wealth. Because the more intelligent they are, the better they’ll be at distorting reality and convincing us that what’s good for them is good for the world when it’s just the opposite.

But for another thing, there's no law of nature which says that control over capital has to be in a few hands―that's like saying that political power has to be in a few hands. Why? There wasn't a law that said that the king and the nobles had to run everything, and there isn't a law that says that corporate owners and managers have to run everything either. These are social arrangements. They developed historically, they can be changed historically

I gruppi di potere sono in grado di difendersi e secondo gli standard dei media il fatto che la loro posizione e i loro diritti vengano minacciati costituisce scandalo. Al contrario, finché illegalità e violazione dei principi democratici colpiscono gruppi marginali [...] l'opposizione dei media è completamente assente.

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.

..And ever since then, every time popular movements have succeeded in dissolving power to a certain extent, there has been a deepening recognition amount elites in the west that as you begin to lose the power to control people by force you have to start to control what they think.

Language has a creative character: it is typically innovative without bounds, appropriate to circumstance but not caused by them – a crucial distinction – and can engender thoughts in others that they recognise they could have expressed themselves.

...the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon.