Noam Chomsky Quotes

moderntek:

KZSU Interviewed Noam Chomsky about Social Media, Occupy Wall Street and the future of funding scientific research in America. Professor Chomsky also discussed why US Corporations and Venture Capitalists are not investing enough in technologies that can help solve our environmental problems. The interview is available from this link.

— 3 hours ago with 47 notes

"Moreover, the institutions of the transnational state largely serve other masters, as state power typically does; in this case, the rising transnational corporations in the domains of finance and other services, manufacturing, media and communications—institutions that are totalitarian in internal structure, quite unaccountable, absolutist in character, and immense in power. Within them, a participant takes a place in a fairly rigid hierarchy of domination, implementing orders from above, transmitting them downwards. Those outside may try to rent themselves to the masters and may purchase what they produce, but few other options are open to the great mass of the population."

World orders, old and new - By Noam Chomsky

— 3 days ago with 25 notes

#noam chomsky

"In fact, power is very highly concentrated, decision-making is highly concentrated in small interpenetrating elites, ultimately based on ownership of the private economy in large measure, but also in related ideological and political and managerial elites. Since that’s the way the society effectively functions, it has to have political theology that explains that that’s the way it ought to function, which means that you have to establish the pretense that the participants of that elite know what they are doing, in our interest, and have the kind of understanding and access to information that is denied the rest of us, so that we poor slobs ought to just watch, not interfere. Maybe we can choose one or another of them every few years, but it’s their job to manage things, not ours."

Noam Chomsky - The Chomsky Reader

(Source: chomsky.info)

— 4 days ago with 34 notes

#noam chomsky

"But we can - and should - certainly begin pointing out that corporations are fundamentally illegitimate, and that they don’t have to exist at all in their modern form. Just as other oppressive institutions - slavery, say, or royalty - have been changed or eliminated, so corporate power can be changed or eliminated. What are the limits? There aren’t any. Everything is ultimately under public control."

How the World Works - Noam Chomsky

— 4 days ago with 81 notes

#chomsky #noam chomsky #corporations #economics

ebonyatx:

Noam Chomsky - Media Control #Chomsky #propaganda #anarchy #resist #nightcap

— 4 days ago with 26 notes

katherinexia:

Met Noam Chomsky the other day… Quite an interesting guy… #linguistics #mit #chomsky #chomskystyle (at MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy)

— 5 days ago with 35 notes

"

Let me begin by referring to something that we have already discussed, that is, if it is correct, as I believe it is, that a fundamental element of human nature is the need for creative work, for creative inquiry, for free creation without the arbitrary limiting effect of coercive institutions, then, of course, it will follow that a decent society should maximise the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to be realised. That means trying to overcome the elements of repression and oppression and destruction and coercion that exist in any existing society, ours for example, as a historical residue.

Now, any form of coercion or repression, any form of autocratic control of some domain of existence, let’s say, private ownership of capital or state control of some aspects of human life, any such autocratic restriction on some area of human endeavour, can be justified, if at all, only in terms of the need for subsistence, or the need for survival, or the need for defence against some horrible fate or something of that sort. It cannot be justified intrinsically.

"

Noam Chomsky, 1971 (via noonereadstheurl)

(Source: chomsky.info, via noonereadstheurl)

— 6 days ago with 35 notes

"Getting money out of politics is a very crucial matter; it has been for a long time. It’s gotten much more extreme now. For a long time, elections have just been public relations extravaganzas where people are mobilized every four years to get excited to go push a button and then go home and forget about it."

Occupy - Noam Chomsky

— 1 week ago with 55 notes

#noam chomsky #chomsky

Introduction to Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

(Source: adoveisalion)

— 1 week ago with 109 notes

pax-loveandwar:

Manufacturing Consent.. My first edition copy, bought NEW in 1988.

— 1 week ago with 31 notes

(Source: foucaultthehaters)

— 1 week ago with 595 notes

thecryingofblog49:

A bit of reading before bed. Am I doing it right?

— 3 weeks ago with 27 notes

bintbattuta:

There’s no way to be informed without devoting effort to the task, whether we have in mind what’s happening in the world, physics, major league baseball, or anything else. Understanding doesn’t come free. It’s true that the task is somewhere between awfully difficult and utterly hopeless for an isolated individual. But it’s feasible for anyone who is part of a cooperative community - and that’s true about all of the other cases too. Same holds for “intellectual self-defense.” It takes a lot of self-confidence - perhaps more self-confidence than one ought to have - to take a position alone because it seems to you right, in opposition to everything you see and hear. There’s even evidence about this: under experimental conditions people deny what they know to be true when they are informed that others they have reason to trust are doing so (Solomon Asch’s classic experiments in social psychology, which were often held to show that people are conformist and irrational, but can be understood differently, to indicate that people are quite reasonable, and using all the information at hand). More important than any of this is that a community - an organization - can be a basis for action, and while understanding the world may be good for the soul (not meant to be disparaging), it doesn’t help anyone else, or oneself very much either for that matter, unless it leads to action.

Noam Chomsky, On Staying Informed and Intellectual Self-Defense

— 3 weeks ago with 37 notes

idioverdose:

Got this yesterday

— 3 weeks ago with 21 notes

"We shouldn’t be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas."

Noam Chomsky (via quotesandnonsense)

— 3 weeks ago with 174 notes