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Quotes by Noam Chomsky

US activist & linguist (1928 - )

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

Experience becomes possible because of language.

The structure of language determines not only thought, but reality itself.

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.

The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything... 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. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

Advertising is tax deductible, so we all pay for the privilege of being manipulated and controlled.

In its foreign policies, the United States does not punish atrocities, only disobedience.

According to the standards of the Nuremburg Trials, every American president since World War II could be convicted as a war criminal and hung.

The freedom of speech is worthless without the freedom of offensive speech. Goebbels and Himmler were for freedom of speech that was inoffensive to the state.