Top 31 quotes by Noam Chomsky

This thinker, psycholinguist and activist is one of the intellectual references of the 20th century.

A multidisciplinary thinker, committed and critical of the system. This is how Noam Chomsky (United States, 1928) can be defined.a veteran psycholinguist and political activist who is one of the most applauded figures of contemporary thought.

• Here you can read Noam Chomsky's biography.

Chomsky, born in East Oak Lane, Pennsylvania, has conducted his academic career along several lines. Perhaps the best known are his facet as a researcher and psycholinguist, in addition to his staunch political activism as an advocate of anarcho-syndicalism.

As an academic, he formulated his theory of language development. As an activist, he published (and continues to publish) valuable works analyzing the impact of U.S. imperialism on international geopolitics, as well as being one of the most renowned discourse analysts.

 

Noam Chomsky's phrases to understand his political thought

This versatility in the topics Chomsky has addressed has aroused equal parts admiration and misgivings.. He is criticized for his permanent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy. However, few question that Noam Chomsky is one of the most brilliant and prolix thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first century.

In this article we will get to know his best quotes and famous quotations.

Case after case, we see that conformism is the easy path, and the road to privilege and prestige; dissent, however, brings personal costs.

His political activism has brought him strong detractors.

2. The people honored in the Bible were the false prophets. Those whom we call the prophets were those who were imprisoned and sent to the desert.

A reflection by Noam Chomsky on one of the fundamental pillars on which the Catholic Church bases its doctrine.

3. If you assume that there is no hope, then you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct toward freedom, then there are opportunities to change things.

A phrase of Chomsky's that reminds us of the great Eduardo Galeano.

4. People pay for their own subordination.

Accepting a precarious job or paying thousands of euros for a postgraduate degree are signs of living in a society of grateful slaves.

5. The basic idea running through modern history and modern liberalism is that the public must be marginalized. The general public is seen as no more than ignorant, interfering outsiders, as disoriented cattle.

Western democracy lacks a true sense of handing over decision-making power to the people.

6. When you get a chance to take a look at the file they keep on you at the FBI is when you discover that intelligence agencies in general are extremely incompetent.

Apparently, Chomsky had access to his own secret report and found what he saw to be quite ridiculous.

7. The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I would be ashamed of myself.

Ethics in academia is not usually very present, as Chomsky notes.

8. Freedom without opportunity is a devilish gift, and refusing to give that opportunity is criminal.

An indirect criticism of economic liberalism.

9. Who are the guardians of history? Historians, naturally. The educated classes, in general. Part of their job is to shape our view of the past in ways that support the interests of present power. If they do not do so, they are likely to be marginalized in one way or another.

Another reflection on power relations in today's society.

10. We should not be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.

Ideas and creativity over individualism and personalism.

11. What finance capital basically wants is stable currency, not growth.

A thought that challenges the financial system.

12. Corporations are simply as totalitarian as Bolshevism or fascism. They have the same intellectual roots of the early 20th century. Therefore, just as other forms of totalitarianism had to disappear, so must private tyrannies. They have to be brought under public control.

The days of private enterprise and its vertical hierarchy are numbered, according to the thinker and activist.

13. The principles are clear and explicit. The free market is fine for the third world and its growing counterpart in our country. Mothers with dependent children can be firmly instructed about the need for self-sufficiency, but not executives and dependent investors, please. For them the welfare state must flourish.

Another famous quote from Chomsky reviewing the status quo in contemporary capitalism.

14. Sports play a societal role in the procreation of jingoistic and chauvinistic attitudes. They are intended to organize a community that is committed to its gladiators.

The hooligan phenomenon can be a powerful weapon of the neoliberal system.

15. If we don't believe in freedom of speech for the people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

Are there limits to freedom of expression?

16. Propaganda is to a democracy what coercion is to a totalitarian state.

A parallelism that can make us reflect on the supposedly free society in which we live.

17. If you do not develop a constant and lively democratic culture, capable of involving the candidates, they will not do the things you voted for them. Pushing a button and then going home is not going to change things.

Another reflection on politics and democratic culture.

18. Rights are not granted, they are conquered.

Democracy was not given by the guarantors of the dictatorship.

19. Part of the reason why capitalism seems to be successful is that it has always had a lot of slave labor, half of the population. What women do -outside the world of work- counts for nothing.

Feminism and social criticism, two key elements in Noam Chomsky's work.

20. The critique of "democracy" among anarchists has often been the critique of parliamentary democracy as it has emerged in societies with deeply repressive features.

Anarchism and its view of public life.

21. You cannot have a functioning democracy without what sociologists call "secondary organizations," places where people can meet, plan, talk, and develop ideas.

Meeting places for the people are fundamental to bringing about large-scale change.

22. The purpose of the mass media...is not so much to inform and report what is happening, but rather to shape public opinion according to the agendas of the dominant corporate power.

The media and its nefarious influence on the opinions of the uninformed population.

23. Who are the guardians of history?

A rhetorical phrase referring to the ruling classes.

24. The United States is unusual among industrial democracies in terms of the rigidity of the system of ideological control, indoctrination, we might say, exercised through the mass media.

Another thought that delves into the manipulation exercised by the mass media.

Famous quotes on education and learning

Since Chomsky developed a large part of his intellectual career as a psycholinguist and philosopher of education, it is also interesting to echo the following quotes from his work on education.It is also interesting to echo several of his phrases and quotes that deal with this subject.

25. The purpose of education is to show people how to learn for themselves. The other concept of education is indoctrination.

A clear phrase that tells us what should be the way forward in education.

26. Education has a value in its own right, regardless of the economic impact it has on society.

A reflection against the excessive economicism with which the educational system is currently organized.

27. Do we want to have a society of free, creative and independent individuals, capable of appreciating, learning from and contributing to the cultural achievements of the past, or do we want people who increase the GDP? It is not necessarily the same thing.

Along the same lines as above.

28. If you don't know what you are looking for, if you have no idea what is relevant, willing to question this idea, if you don't have that, exploring the internet is just randomly taking unverifiable facts that mean nothing.

Internet can be very useful, but we must have enough criteria to know where to surf.

29. Internet is like any other technology, basically neutral, you can use it in constructive or harmful ways. Constructive ways are real, but very few.

A famous quote that, like the previous one, questions the use we make of the network of networks.

30. In the common problems of human life, science tells us very little, and scientists, as people, are certainly no guide. In fact, they are often the worst of guides, since they often tend to concentrate, like a laser, on their own professional interests, and know very little about the world.

An essential difference between the scientist and the freethinker.

31. Science is an exploration of very difficult questions. Without disparaging the theory of evolution, that is a tremendous intellectual advance, but it tells you nothing about whether or not there is what people believe when they talk about God. It doesn't even talk about that issue.

Religion is another subject of study for the Jewish intellectual.