Noam Chomsky quotes

" If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. " # Freedom of Speech # Freedom # Power

" As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss. " # Science and Scientists # Action # Decisions

" Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists. " # Growth # Freedom # Power

" Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony. " # Protest # Heroes and Heroism # Reality

" The basic idea which runs right through modern history and modern liberalism is that the public has got to be marginalized. The general public are viewed as no more than ignorant and meddlesome outsiders, a bewildered herd. " # Public # Ideas # Arts and Artists

" I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system. " # Fascism # Dictators and Dictatorship # America

" The consistent anarchist should be a socialist, but a socialist of a particular sort. He will not only oppose alienated and specialized labor and look forward to the appropriation of capital by the whole body of workers, but he will also insist that this appropriation be direct, not exercised by some elite force acting in the name of the proletariat. Some sort of council communism is the natural form of revolutionary socialism in an industrial society. It reflects the intuitive understanding that democracy is largely a sham when the industrial system is controlled by any form of autocratic elite, whether of owners, managers, and technocrats, a vanguard party, or a State bureaucracy. " # Anarchism # Freedom # Power

" The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful. " # Human Nature # Power # Science and Scientists

" The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself. " # Intelligence and Intellectuals # Betrayal # Tradition

" Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation. " # Language # Law and Lawyers # Words