Quotes by Noam Chomsky

There are two problems for our species survival - nuclear war and environmental catastrophe - and were hurtling towards them. Knowingly.

Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.

Theres a War Crimes Act in the United States passed by a Republican Congress in 1996, which says that grave breaches of the Geneva Convention are subject to the death penalty. And that doesnt mean the soldier that committed them - that means the commanders.

The major advances in speed of communication and ability to interact took place more than a century ago. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph was far more radical than that from telephone to email!

The Occupy movement did create spontaneously communities that taught people something: you can be in a supportive community of mutual aid and cooperation and develop your own health system and library and have open space for democratic discussion and participation. Communities like that are really important.

The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.

Humans have certain properties and characteristics which are intrinsic to them, just as every other organism does. Thats human nature.

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.

I dont join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldnt have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in Heaven - thats none of my business, ultimately. I wont lecture her on the philosophy of science.

If you are giving a graduate course you dont try to impress the students with oratory, you try to challenge them, get them to question you.

Death and genitals are things that frighten people, and when people are frightened, they develop means of concealment and aggression. It is common sense.

I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.

As far as U.S. intelligence knows, Iran is developing nuclear capacities, but they dont know if they are trying to develop nuclear weapons or not. Chances are theyre developing whats called nuclear capability, which many states have. That is the ability to have nuclear weapons if they decide to do it. Thats not a crime.

The close Turkish-Israeli relations go back to the late 1950s - military intelligence, commercial, more recently, tourism and cultural relations.

When Rumsfeld gets up on television and says we have definitive intelligence that al Qaeda is working with Iraq, how is an ordinary citizen supposed to react? They wont tell you the evidence, and when anyone asks, they say, Well, you know: Its secret.

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.

In 1949, China declared independence - an event known in Western discourse as the loss of China in the U.S. - with bitter recriminations and conflict over who was responsible for that loss.

You could imagine a language exactly like English except it doesnt have connectives like and that allow you to make longer expressions. An infant learning truncated English would have no idea about this: They would just pick it up as they would standard English.

Social Security is based on a principle. Its based on the principle that you care about other people. You care whether the widow across town, a disabled widow, is going to be able to have food to eat.

Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.