If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
Noam Chomsky
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.
The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.
Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.
Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.
Debt is a social and ideological construct, not a simple economic fact.
If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.
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.
You cannot control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption.
Governments regard their own citizens as their main enemy, and they have to be - protect themselves. That's why you have state secret laws. Citizens are not supposed to know what their government is doing to them.
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.
Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.
If you're teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.
Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.
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!
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.
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.
As a research tool, the internet is invaluable.
The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.
I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.
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 perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order.
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.
The Federal Reserve has an official commitment to two different policies. One is to prevent inflation from getting too high. The second is to maintain high employment... the European Central Bank has only the first. It has no commitment to keep employment up.
The money in politics is a cash cow for the media.
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.
If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.
The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself.
Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.
It's dangerous when people are willing to give up their privacy.
Our only real hope for democracy is that we get the money out of politics entirely and establish a system of publicly funded elections.
It's perfectly obvious that there is some genetic factor that distinguishes humans from other animals and that it is language-specific. The theory of that genetic component, whatever it turns out to be, is what is called universal grammar.
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
Death and genitals are things that frighten people, and when people are frightened, they develop means of concealment and aggression. It is common sense.
The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor led to many very good things. If you follow the trail, it led to kicking Europeans out of Asia - that saved tens of millions of lives in India alone.
There are two problems for our species' survival - nuclear war and environmental catastrophe - and we're hurtling towards them. Knowingly.
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 like the cold weather. It means you get work done.
As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.
Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.
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 in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.
When a politician uses the word 'folks,' we should brace ourselves for the deceit, or worse, that is coming.
NATO was constructed on the - with the reason, whether one believes it or not, that it was going to defend Western Europe from Russian assault. Once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, that reason was gone. So, first question: why does NATO exist?
The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.
The Internet has compromised the quality of debate.
There are major efforts being made to dismantle Social Security, the public schools, the post office - anything that benefits the population has to be dismantled. Efforts against the U.S. Postal Service are particularly surreal.
If workers are more insecure, that's very 'healthy' for the society, because if workers are insecure, they won't ask for wages, they won't go on strike, they won't call for benefits; they'll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that's optimal for corporations' economic health.
States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.
Remember, weapons of mass destruction don't mean missiles.
