Quotes by Noam Chomsky

One of the best predictors of policy around is Thomas Fergusons investment theory of politics, as he calls it - very outstanding political economist - which essentially - I mean, to say it in a sentence, he describes elections as occasions in which groups of investors coalesce and invest to control the state.

I stated that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are among the most unspeakable crimes in history. I took no position on just where they stand on the scale of horrors relative to Auschwitz, the bombing of Chungking, Lidice, and so on.

For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.

Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated - Japans attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example.

If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another.

Governments are not representative. They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are dominant and rich.

The former colonies, in Latin America in particular, have a better chance than ever before to overcome centuries of subjugation, violence and foreign intervention, which they have so far survived as dependencies with islands of luxury in a sea of misery.

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

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.

What happened in the missile crisis in October 1962 has been prettified to make it look as if acts of courage and thoughtfulness abounded. The truth is that the whole episode was almost insane.

If workers are more insecure, thats very healthy for the society, because if workers are insecure, they wont ask for wages, they wont go on strike, they wont call for benefits; theyll serve the masters gladly and passively. And thats optimal for corporations economic health.

If youre worried about the deficit, pay attention to the fact that its almost all attributable to military spending and the totally dysfunctional health program.

The whole infrastructure of air travel was, and is, part of government policy. It is not a natural development of a free economic system - at least not in the way that is claimed. The same is true of the roads, of course.

Today, we have private airline companies, but if you take a look at a Boeing plane next time you travel, youll see that you are basically taking a ride on a modified bomber.

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

China is a great manufacturing center, but its actually mostly an assembly plant. So it assembles parts and components, high technology that comes from the surrounding industrial - more advanced industrial centers - Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, the United States, Europe - and it basically assembles them.

Well before September 11, it was understood that with modern technology, the rich and powerful will lose their near monopoly of the means of violence and can expect to suffer atrocities on home soil.

In 1993, Israel and North Korea were moving towards an agreement in which North Korea would stop sending any missiles or military technology to the Middle East and Israel would recognize that country. President Clinton intervened and blocked it.