The social and physical construction of suburban America really was quite complex. It was a very elaborate system, and clearly a massive social engineering project that has changed U.S. society enormously. – Noam Chomsky
Turkey must find its place if, of course, it can heal its internal sores, and none is more malignant than the perennial Kurdish issue. – Noam Chomsky
Social Security is based on a principle. It’s based on the principle that you care about other people. You care whether the widow across town, a disabled widow, is going to be able to have food to eat. – Noam Chomsky
Iran has little capacity to deploy force. Its strategic doctrines are defensive, designed to deter invasion long enough for diplomacy to set it. – Noam Chomsky
Karl Marx was in favor of socialist and communist-socialist revolutions, but he had a pretty nuanced view about it. – Noam Chomsky
You go back to the 17th century, the commercial and industrial centers of the world were China and India. – Noam Chomsky
As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss. – Noam Chomsky
The American escalation of the war in Laos provoked a response by the Communist forces, which now control more of Laos than ever before. – Noam Chomsky
In the 1960s, there was a point, 1968, ’69, when there was a very strong antiwar movement against the war in Vietnam. But it’s worth remembering that the war in Vietnam started – an outright war started in 1962. – Noam Chomsky
There are massive efforts on the part of the internet’s corporate owners to try to direct it to become a technique of marginalisation and control. – Noam Chomsky
The United States was seriously defeated in Iraq by Iraqi nationalism – mostly by nonviolent resistance. The United States could kill the insurgents, but they couldn’t deal with half a million people demonstrating in the streets. – Noam Chomsky
The list of U.S. vetoes at the Security Council to protect Israeli aggression and occupation is huge. – Noam Chomsky
When secular figures are turned into divinities, they way they are in Peian Yang or Stanford University – that I don’t like. – Noam Chomsky
I don’t see any possibility of Britain and the U.S. allowing a sovereign independent Iraq; that’s almost inconceivable. – Noam Chomsky
Even in the 1950s, President Eisenhower was concerned about what he called a campaign of hatred of the U.S. in the Arab world, because of the perception on the Arab street that it supported harsh and oppressive regimes to take their oil. – Noam Chomsky
Sooner or later, jihadist-style terror and WMD are going to come together and the consequences could be horrendous. – Noam Chomsky
There are two problems for our species’ survival – nuclear war and environmental catastrophe – and we’re hurtling towards them. Knowingly. – Noam Chomsky
To some degree it matters who’s in office, but it matters more how much pressure they’re under from the public. – Noam Chomsky
In the late 1990s, some of the worst terrorist atrocities in the world were what the Turkish government itself called state terror, namely massive atrocities, 80 percent of the arms coming from the United States, millions of refugees, tens of thousands of people killed, hideous repression, that’s international terror, and we can go on and on. – Noam Chomsky
When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine. – Noam Chomsky
Fidel Castro, whatever people may think of him, is a hero in Latin America, primarily because he stood up to the United States. – Noam Chomsky
Violence can succeed, as Americans know well from the conquest of the national territory. But at terrible cost. It can also provoke violence in response, and often does. – Noam Chomsky
If workers are more insecure, that’s very ‘healthy’ for the society, because if workers are insecure, they won’t ask for wages, they won’t go on strike, they won’t call for benefits; they’ll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that’s optimal for corporations’ economic health. – Noam Chomsky