Top 500 Noam Chomsky Quotes (2023 Update)
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451. “On October 15, 1965, an estimated 70,000 people took part in large-scale anti-war demonstrations.”

— Noam Chomsky

452. “The old-fashioned idea is that responsibility falls upon those who borrow and lend. Money was not borrowed by campesinos, assembly plant workers, or slum-dwellers. The mass of the population gained little from borrowing, indeed often suffered grievously from its effects.”

— Noam Chomsky

453. “In 1962, war was avoided by Khrushchev’s willingness to accept Kennedy’s hegemonic demands.”

— Noam Chomsky

454. “And when you look, most of the time these authority structures have no justification: they have no moral justification, they have no justification in the interests of the person lower in the hierarchy, or in the interests of other people, or the environment, or the future, or the society, or anything else – they’re just there in order to preserve certain structures of power and domination, and the people at the top. So.”

— Noam Chomsky

455. “Thanh Hoa itself is a rich agricultural province. Rice fields, a pattern of many shades of green, stretch far into the distance along the road, which also winds through foothills and the fringes of heavy jungle where tigers are said to roam. The vegetation, wild or cultivated, is lush.”

— Noam Chomsky

456. “We should not be speaking to, but with. That is second nature to any good teacher.”

— Noam Chomsky

457. “There is no body of theory or significant body of relevant information, beyond the comprehension of the layman, which makes policy immune from criticism.”

— Noam Chomsky

458. “Washington still refuses to provide evidence to support the claims in 1990 that a huge Iraqi military build-up on the Saudi border justified war.”

— Noam Chomsky

459. “If the United States loses the economic weapons of control, it is very much weakened.”

— Noam Chomsky

460. “Our crimes, for which we are responsible: as taxpayers, for failing to provide massive reparations, for granting refuge and immunity to the perpetrators, and for allowing the terrible facts to be sunk deep in the memory hole. All of this is of great significance, as it has been in the past.”

— Noam Chomsky

461. “The West Bank is essentially imprisoned.”

— Noam Chomsky

462. “The beauty of the system, however, is that such dissent and inconvenient information are kept within bounds and at the margins, so that while their presence shows that the system is not monolithic, they are not large enough to interfere unduly with the domination of the official agenda.”

— Noam Chomsky

463. “We are entering a period of human history that may provide an answer to the question of whether it is better to be smart than stupid.”

— Noam Chomsky

464. “Corporations with their political allies are waging an unrelenting class war against working people.”

— Noam Chomsky

465. “The prescription for endless war poses a far greater danger to Americans than perceived enemies do, for reasons the terrorist organisations understand very well.”

— Noam Chomsky

466. “The argument that resistance to the war should remain strictly nonviolent seems to me overwhelming.”

— Noam Chomsky

467. “Workers aren’t free to move, labor can’t move, but capital can.”

— Noam Chomsky

468. “From the late 1940s, into and through the ’50s, there developed a complex interaction between federal government, state and local government, real-estate interests, commercial interests and court decisions, which had the effect of undermining the mass transit system across the country.”

— Noam Chomsky

469. “The threat and use of violence is stimulating nuclear proliferation along with jihadi terrorism.”

— Noam Chomsky

470. “Pre-emptive war might fall within the framework of international law.”

— Noam Chomsky

471. “These are fashionable people who call themselves philosophers.”

— Noam Chomsky

472. “If you claim to have a theory that deduces unexpected consequences from nontrivial principles, let’s see it.”

— Noam Chomsky

473. “The Washington leadership has put aside non-proliferation programmes and devoted its energies and resources to driving the country to war by extraordinary deceit, then trying to manage the catastrophe it created in Iraq.”

— Noam Chomsky

474. “It’s designed to carry forward the neoliberal project to maximize profit and domination, and to set the working people in the world in competition with one another so as to lower wages to increase insecurity.”

— Noam Chomsky

475. “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.”

— Noam Chomsky

476. “When I look at public opinion, I’m not far out of the mainstream. I’m in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I’ve ever said.”

— Noam Chomsky

477. “I doubt that national languages will disappear. In fact, to some extent they’re becoming more diverse, like in Europe.”

— Noam Chomsky

478. “A dramatic, evocative, thoughtful and very accessible account of one of the most important stories of the century – and one of the most ominous, unless citizens are aroused to action to rein in abusive state power.”

— Noam Chomsky

479. “The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values.”

— Noam Chomsky

480. “September 11 shocked many Americans into an awareness that they had better pay much closer attention to what the US government does in the world and how it is perceived. Many issues have been opened for discussion that were not on the agenda before. That’s all to the good.”

— Noam Chomsky

481. “Mr. Mijanovi and those associated with him are the hope and the conscience of the Yugoslav revolution.”

— Noam Chomsky

482. “There clearly is a serious race problem in the country. Just take a look at what’s happening to African American communities. For example wealth, wealth in African American communities is almost zero. The history is striking.”

— Noam Chomsky

483. “I think there was an overemphasis in the early stage on militarization rather than directly providing relief. I don’t think it has any long-term significance.”

— Noam Chomsky

484. “I admire Ralph Nader and Denis Kucinich very much, and insofar as they bring up issues and carry out an educational and organisational function – that’s important, and fine, and I support it.”

— Noam Chomsky

485. “The escalation to attack undefended civilian targets is just a classic illustration of terrorism.”

— Noam Chomsky

486. “We should have pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will.”

— Noam Chomsky

487. “States are violent to the extent that they have the power to act in the interests of those with domestic power.”

— Noam Chomsky

488. “You’ve got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they’re properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous, because they’re not competent to think.”

— Noam Chomsky

489. “What we have to do is trap them into consumerism. Carry out enough propaganda and teasers and so on to make freed slaves feel they’ve got to have these commodities. They go to the company store and they get them, they’re in debt, and pretty soon they’re trapped – the slave economy’s back.”

— Noam Chomsky

490. “Large corporate advertisers on television will rarely sponsor programs that engage in serious criticisms of corporate activities, such as the problem of environmental degradation, the workings of the military-industrial complex, or corporate support of and benefits from Third World tyrannies.”

— Noam Chomsky

491. “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

— Noam Chomsky

492. “In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category.”

— Noam Chomsky

493. “One of the functions that things like professional sports play, in our society and others, is to offer an area to deflect people’s attention from things that matter, so that the people in power can do what matters without public interference.”

— Noam Chomsky

494. “We live in this world, not another one that we’d prefer, and sometimes it’s necessary to follow painful paths if we hope to provide at least a little help for suffering people.”

— Noam Chomsky

495. “The ‘free-floating intellectual’ may occupy himself with problems because of their inherent interest and importance, perhaps to little effect.”

— Noam Chomsky

496. “Independence of mind, enthusiasm, dedication to the field, and willingness to challenge and question and to explore new direction. There are plenty of people like that, but schools tend to discourage those characteristics.”

— Noam Chomsky

497. “The level of destruction and terror and violence carried out by the powerful states far exceeds anything that can imaginably can be done by groups that are called terrorists and subnational groups.”

— Noam Chomsky

498. “The Bush Administration do have moral values. Their moral values are very explicit: shine the boots of the rich and the powerful, kick everybody else in the face, and let your grandchildren pay for it. That simple principle predicts almost everything that’s happening.”

— Noam Chomsky

499. “American decline is real, though the apocalyptic vision reflects the familiar ruling class perception that anything short of total control amounts to total disaster.”

— Noam Chomsky

500. “One might ask why tobacco is legal and marijuana not. A possible answer is suggested by the nature of the crop. Marijuana can be grown almost anywhere, with little difficulty. It might not be easily marketable by major corporations. Tobacco is quite another story.”

— Noam Chomsky