1,450 Quotes by Noam Chomsky

In the late 1960s, the masses were supposed to be passive, not entering into the public arena and having their voices heard.

I don't know if I officially proofread my father's book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.

Haitian rice farmers are quite efficient, but they can't compete with U.S. agribusiness that relies on a huge government subsidy, thanks to Ronald Reagan's free market enthusiasms.

If we move toward the weaponisation of space, we can bid farewell to the planet. The chances of survival are very slight.

The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another.

I don't want followers.

I am thinking of actual cases of adolescents, lets say, who think they have five hundred friends, because there are five hundred people on their Facebook account. But these are the kind of friends whose relation to you is that if you say 'I bought a sandwich'; they say 'did it taste good?' You know, that's a kind of interaction, but very different to having a real friend, somebody who you can actually talk to.

What can one say about a country where a museum of science in a great city can feature an exhibit in which people fire machine guns from a helicopter at Vietnamese huts, with a light flashing when a hit is scored? What can one say about a country where such an idea can even be considered? You have to weep for this country.

In the case of Yugoslavia v. NATO, one of the charges was genocide. The U.S. appealed to the court, saying that, by law, the United States is immune to the charge of genocide, self-immunized, and the court accepted that, so the case proceeded against the other NATO powers, but not against the United States.