“If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world.”
— Noam Chomsky
“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.”
“A language is not just words. It’s a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It’s all embodied in a language.”
“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”
“The general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.”
“You are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions.”
“Education is a system of imposed ignorance.”
“We shouldn’t be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.”
“As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.”
“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.”
“The more you can increase fear of drugs, crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all of the people.”
“If you assume there is no hope, you guarantee there will be no hope.”
“We don’t use the term ‘working class’ here because it’s a taboo term. You’re supposed to say ‘middle class,’ because it helps diminish the understanding that there’s a class war going on.”
“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.”
“How it is we have so much information, but know so little?”
“If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.”
“The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don’t know how to be submissive, and so on – because they’re dysfunctional to the institutions.”
“Language etches the grooves through which your thoughts must flow.”
“If you’re teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.”
“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”
“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.”
“The only way we can put a permanent end to terrorism is to stop participating in it.”
“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”
“The more privilege you have, the more opportunity you have. The more opportunity you have, the more responsibility you have.”
“It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.”
“Citizens of the democratic societies should undertake a course of intellectual self defense to protect themselves from manipulation and control, and to lay the basis for meaningful democracy.”
“See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence.”
“Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It’s something you have to find out for yourself.”
“The structure of language determines not only thought, but reality itself.”
“We still name our military helicopter gunships after victims of genocide. Nobody bats an eyelash about that: Blackhawk. Apache. And Comanche. If the Luftwaffe named its military helicopters Jew and Gypsy, I suppose people would notice.”
“Governments will use whatever technology is available to combat their primary enemy – their own population.”
“Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.”
“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.”
“That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.”
“The world is a very puzzling place. If you’re not willing to be puzzled, you just become a replica of someone else’s mind.”
“It is quite possible – overwhelmingly probable, one might guess – that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology.”
“Democracy is always harmful to elite interests. Almost by definition.”
“A basic principal of modern state capitalism is that costs and risks are socialized to the extent possible, while profit is privatized.”
“I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.”
“Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that’s where the light is. It has no other choice.”
“It’s not radical Islam that worries the US – it’s independence.”
“International relations bears more than a slight resemblance to the mafia.”
“Religion is based on the idea that God is an imbecile.”
“The indoctrination is so deep that educated people think they’re being objective.”
“He who controls the media controls the minds of the public.”
“In the US, there is basically one party – the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population.”
“Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they can’t afford the time to think.”
“A fundamental element of human nature is the need for creative work, for creative inquiry, for free creation without the arbitrary limiting effects of coercive institutions. A decent society should maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to be realized.”
“That’s the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody’s going to be against, and everybody’s going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything.”
“There’s a good reason why nobody studies history, it just teaches you too much.”
“The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.”
“Under capitalism, we can’t have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control.”
“It doesn’t matter what we cover, it matters what you discover.”
“Moral cowardice and intellectual corruption are the natural concomitants of unchallenged privilege.”
“Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.”
“If you are not offending people who ought to be offended, you’re doing something wrong.”
“That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.”
“Legalizing marijuana would make a lot of sense, I don’t think there’s a single case of marijuana overdose on record and tens of millions of users. It’s much less dangerous than alcohol, for example.”
“The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.”
“Libertarian socialism is properly to be regarded as the inheritor of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment.”
“Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.”
“The United States in many ways resembles a Third World country – far more elevated, but it has many of those structural characteristics: the extreme inequality of wealth, the deterioration of infrastructure because it only serves poor people, predatory operations, huge corruption, and so on.”
“The anniversary of Hiroshima, should be a day of somber reflection, not only on the terrible events of that day in 1945, but also on what they revealed: that humans, in their dedicated quest to extend their capacities for destruction, had finally found a way to approach the ultimate limit.”
“There is massive propaganda for everyone to consume. Consumption is good for profits and consumption is good for the political establishment.”
“Resource extraction impacts a global environment that is increasingly at severe risk.”
“A war with Pakistan would be an utter disaster.”
“In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.”
“So, at one extreme you have indigenous, tribal societies trying to stem the race to disaster. At the other extreme, the richest, most powerful societies in world history, like the United States and Canada, are racing full-speed ahead to destroy the environment as quickly as possible.”
“Procurement is a major technique of state subsidy.”
“People don’t talk to each other. You’re alone with your television set or internet. But you can’t have a functioning democracy without what sociologists call “secondary organizations,” places where people can get together, plan, talk and develop ideas. You don’t do it alone.”
“Education is not for profit. If you’re not in education for profit, it’s not going to be a fair critique for education.”
“I like the cold weather. It means you get work done.”
“I have no Facebook page or Twitter – I don’t participate in it, and I don’t like it particularly. I mean, it’s a form of interaction, which strikes me as extremely superficial.”
“As long as each individual is facing the television tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.”
“For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination.”
“The ideal is to create a completely fragmented atomized society where everybody is totally alone, doing nothing but trying to pursue created wants, and the wants are created.”
“One might ask why tobacco is legal and marijuana not. A possible answer is suggested by the nature of the crop.”
“I don’t have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had.”
“It’s a near miracle that nuclear war has so far been avoided.”
“People tend to rally around power.”
“The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.”
“There is a social responsibility to take care of vulnerable people. It seems that a sensible social responsibility is obligatory education, but also decent education, and that is not happening.”
“Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.”
“Sports plays a societal role in engendering jingoist and chauvinist attitudes. They’re designed to organize a community to be committed to their gladiators.”
“Popular struggles to bring about a freer and more just society have been resisted by violence and repression, and massive efforts to control opinion and attitudes. Over time, however, they have met with considerable success, even though there is a long way to go, and there is often regression.”
“There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‘That person I see is a savage monster;’ instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.”
“Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.”
“A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production, and the wage-slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.”
“The truth of the matter is that about 99 percent of teaching is making the students feel interestedin the material. Then the other 1 percent has to do with your methods. And that’s not just true of languages. It’s true of every subject.”
“I didn’t pay my taxes for years.”
“The atrocities in Cambodia are a direct and understandable response to the violence of the imperial system.”
“In ideal form of social control is an atomised collection of individuals focused on their own narrow concern, lacking the kinds of organisations in which they can gain information, develop and articulate their thoughts, and act constructively to achieve common ends.”
“Why not stakeholder action? There’s no economic principal that says that management should be responsive to shareholders, in fact you can read in texts of business economics that they could just as well have a system in which the management is responsible to stakeholders.”
“Quite generally, international affairs have more than a slight resemblance to the Mafia. The Godfather does not take it lightly when he is crossed, even by a small storekeeper.”
“In the United States everyone is an illegal immigrant – everyone except the people in Indian Reservations. This is an immigrant society.”
“It is true that classical libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty, diversity, and free association.”
“I know some really outstanding Turkish journalists, and have been pleased and honored to be able to join with them a few times in their courageous protests against state terror and repression.”
“Ontological questions are generally beside the point, hardly more than a form of harassment.”
“The country was founded on the principle that primary role of government is to protect property from the majority, and so it remains.”
“Technology is usually fairly neutral. It’s like a hammer, which can be used to build a house or to destroy someone’s home. The hammer doesn’t care. It is almost always up to us to determine whether the technology is good or bad.”
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