Quotes by Noam Chomsky

About Noam Chomsky:

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator, social justice activist, and anarcho-syndicalist advocate. Sometimes described as the "father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy. He has spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is currently Professor Emeritus, and has authored over 100 books. He has been described as a prominent cultural figure, and was voted the "world's top public intellectual" in a 2005 poll.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The probability of apocalypse soon cannot be realistically estimated, but it is surely too high for any sane person to contemplate with equanimity.

Noam Chomsky

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.

Noam Chomsky

The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - 'indoctrination', we might say - exercised through the mass media.

Noam Chomsky

If you're teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.

Noam Chomsky

Anywhere in Latin America there is a potential threat of the pathology of caudillismo and it has to be guarded against.

Noam Chomsky

As a Zionist youth leader in the 1940s, I was among those who called for a binational state in Mandatory Palestine. When a Jewish state was declared, I felt that it should have the rights of other states - no more, no less.

Noam Chomsky

The Oslo Accords in 1993 determined that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are a single territorial entity which cannot be divided. Immediately, the United States and Israel set about separating the two and making sure that they would not be united.

Noam Chomsky

For 500 years, since European explorers came, Latin American countries had been separated from one another. They had very limited relations. Integration is a prerequisite for independence.

Noam Chomsky

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating ...

Noam Chomsky

Nicaragua dealt with the problem of terrorism in exactly the right way. It followed international law and treaty obligations. It collected evidence, brought the evidence to the highest existing tribunal, the International Court of Justice, and receiv...

Noam Chomsky

It cannot be too often stressed that Israel had no credible pretext for its 2008-9 attack on Gaza, with full U.S. support and illegally using U.S. weapons.

Noam Chomsky

Rational discussion is useful only when there is a significant base of shared assumptions.

Noam Chomsky

With the development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system of injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perve...

Noam Chomsky

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

Noam Chomsky

You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.

Noam Chomsky

Judge Afiuni has suffered enough. She has been subject to acts of violence and humiliations to undermine her human dignity. I am convinced that she must be set free.

Noam Chomsky

Latin America has much richer resources. You'd expect it to be far more advanced than East Asia, but it had the disadvantage of being under imperialist wings.

Noam Chomsky

Spaniards were condemned for appeasing terrorism by voting for withdrawing troops from Iraq in the absence of U.N. authorization - that is, for taking a stand rather like that of 70 percent of Americans, who called for the U.N. to take the leading ro...

Noam Chomsky

I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.

Noam Chomsky

Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

Noam Chomsky

There are massive efforts on the part of the internet's corporate owners to try to direct it to become a technique of marginalisation and control.

Noam Chomsky

Author Bio

  • NameNoam Chomsky
  • DescriptionAmerican linguist, philosopher
  • AliasesAvram Noam Chomsky; A. Noam Chomsky; Chomsky, Noam
  • BornDecember 7, 1928
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Linguist; Opinion Journalist; Political Writer; Educationist; Media Critic
  • AwardsOrwell Award; Guggenheim Fellowship