Authors — Quotes

Noam Chomsky Quotes: 13

I hope that a move toward clemency with Judge Afiuni would be a step towards the importance of maintaining a properly functioning justice system.
Our only real hope for democracy is that we get the money out of politics entirely and establish a system of publicly funded elections.
We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.
The murder of Lumumba, in which the U.S. was involved, in the Congo destroyed Africa's major hope for development. Congo is now total horror story, for years.
The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on -- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions.
Education is a system of imposed ignorance.
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.
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.
That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything.
Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that's where the light is. It has no other choice.
Do you train for passing tests or do you train for creative inquiry?
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.
The Essential Chomsky
If you're independent-minded in school, you're probably going to get in trouble very early on. That's not the trait that's being preferred or cultivated.
Class Warfare: Interviews with David Barsamian