Noam Chomsky Quotes.

Posted on by Opher
What this world lacks is free thinkers who are prepared to stand up and be counted. Noam has an intellect that shines and a moral courage.
If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.
Free speech is an essential part of democracy. I believe that the racists and fascists should be given a platform and their rhetoric demolished with love and reason. Their beliefs of hatred and superiority are hollow. Hold them up to the light and see they have no substance!
Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.
It was the wars in the middle East that spawned this wave of fundamentalism and terrorism. It is the inequality and injustice that create desperate people full of hatred.
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
False news, lies and subterfuge is the basis of the media and maintains the establishment. We are manipulated by the people in power.
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.
Truth is truth. It might not be popular though. This system is corrupt and mad. It is destroying the planet.
The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.
That is how it is done.
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.
An interesting view. They would have hung along with a host of others for crimes against humanity. That would include the gun-runners, business chiefs and all the other contributors to corruption, inequality, exploitation, environmental degradation and war. They have created an unjust system they exploit for selfish greed.
Education is a system of imposed ignorance.
It needs liberating to create free-thinking creative individuals – not qualified clones.
Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.
Indiscriminate bombing to solve problems creates problems.
It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.
The truth is illusive among the double talk and smoke-screens.
States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.
The people ultimately have the power. They can only be duped for so long. The more educated a population becomes the harder it is to fool or control.

26 thoughts on “Noam Chomsky Quotes.”

  2. Q: If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.
    C: An interesting view. They would have hung along with a host of others for crimes against humanity. That would include the gun-runners, business chiefs and all the other contributors to corruption, inequality, exploitation, environmental degradation and war. They have created an unjust system they exploit for selfish greed.

    C’mon Teach! this is elementary level – People are hanged, pictures are hung!

  3. I really liked the quotes especially the one about education because I think we really need to change the education system. The education system always seems to conveniently forget about certain things like when we learnt about WWII and we never once learnt that over 2 million Indians volunteered to help in the war.

    1. WW2 is a huge subject. But the clue might be in the name ‘World’. 85% of the world was involved one way or another.

      1. Yeah I get that is very true but I would have liked to hear that at least once in class and I would have appreciated it if all the countries involved were mentioned at least once instead of just 4 countries

    2. They gloss over lots of things that are inconvenient to their story. There was a lot of racism. In the USA they do not report about the genocide of the American Indians – same in Argentina. They used measles and smallpox to kill tribes. The story of WW2 is slanted. The commonwealth troops from India, South Africa and elsewhere is glossed over.

      1. As in discussed in a school curriculum? Very probably not, at least I don’t think I got any of that, but that was so long ago I can’t remember the details.
        But the story of the Commonwealth troops is accurately recorded. There’s many text books and documentaries on India and Anzac stuff.

      3. Yes exactly it just annoys me how they only give us the information that they want and that will make them look good. I want to learn history but the real history not the one they tell us.

  7. A great set of quotes, Opher. As a Canadian, our participation in both World Wars was glossed over in Allied accounts dominated by the British and the Americans. For example, did you know that Canadian troops excelled at urban warfare in Italy to such a degree that Eisenhower ordered all newly arriving Allied troops to be trained by the Canadians before they saw action in Italy?

    I was heartened by Noam’s take on terrorism. I’ve always believed that we have taken the wrong approach – it clearly isn’t working.

    1. I think the Canadians weren’t the only ones glossed out; the Australians, Africans, Jamaicans, Indians and a host of others have been carefully written out of the picture. The Americans are going a step further and glossing the Brits out. The capture of the enigma machine was done by Americans in the film. How history is written and rewritten.
      Yes terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. What the West does is fight for freedom and democracy.

    2. I have to correct you on that John. No such event of said training occured – for several reasons.
      All Canadian forces in Europe went under the direct administration of Britain, and Britain only.
      The highest number of Canadian troops in Europe at any point was 93,000. Not all of which were deployed all the time. Many divisions were kept back in reserve because they themselves needed further training following the disaster at Dieppe, Puys and Pourville. Those units that did perform well in Sicily were also rested from time to time usually for an entire month, meanwhile British and American forces fought on. Furthermore, in all cases prior to Canadian attempts to advance, some extremely heavy duty ‘softening’ of enemy lines was undertaken by British guns and waves of British/USA bomber squadrons. A tactic always employed following lessons learned from Dieppe etc.
      The Canadians did not have nearly enough troops at spare disposal to be anywhere near training other allied troops. Over a quarter of their forces were casualties, some 26,000 including 5,400 killed.
      I’m not for a second discounting what Canadian troops achieved – far from it.
      What Canada DID do in terms of training was back home in Canada, where they were given the job by Britain, to train thousands of allied pilots.
      However, in real terms, Canada’s greatest contribution towards the war effort was in domestic industrial manufacturing whereby they supplied 50% of Aluminium and 90% of Nickel supplies, a number of bomber and fighter planes and guns and ammunition – although the guns and ammo was only latterly following problems with American mechanisation and British designs.
      Incidently, when Canada’s first troops arrived, they were carrying guns made in 1918 and completely under prepared.
      Truth be told, they were treated with a certain level of suspicion by Britain at first when they intimated that they were willing to send troops – however, only troops that volunteered to be troops, as Canada did not want to risk a public revolt as had happened previously with forced conscription. Britain suggested that they could manufacture Platoon Badges! Talk about a put down!

      I don’t agree with this take that Canada’s war efforts have been glossed over. No half-decent WW2 account would omit their heroic involvement. Too many Victoria Crosses were awarded to wit it would be an impossibility to ignore.
      As for India, perhaps the reason we don’t hear quite so much about them is because they fought mainly on the eastern front in Asia. We also don’t like to remind ourselves of disasters involving both Canadian and Indian and other troops at the fall of Hong Kong and surrender to the Japanese. All over Asia actually was an unmitigated disaster for all concerned.
      I own several hundred books on WW2 and have boxes and boxes of documentary DVD’S, and I can confirm that your guys and a whole number of others get fair credit. I honestly cannot quite fathom what Opher’s on about with his statement that they have been carefully written out of the picture. Well perhaps yes, if one gets their history lessons courtesy of a Hollywood movie, but I don’t really engage in fictional accounts when it concerns WW2.

  8. As to the first quote, I well remember my dad saying ‘I disagree with everything you say and will defend to the death your right to say it’. Democracy, I suppose …

    1. Let them explain themselves so that people can argue with them and expose the paucity of their argument. The only thing we should ban is outright incitement to hatred.

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