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"By now, they rank people by income level or wages roughly the same: The bottom seventy per cent or so are virtually disenfranchised; they have almost no influence on policy, and as you move up the scale you get more influence. At the very top, you basically run the show."
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"You can become a politician and improve the institutions of power in your country."
"The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike."
"The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"
"Patriotism is the narcissism of countries."
"Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions."
"Some people had attack dogs. Ghastek had attack lawyers."
"While the people retain their virtue, and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government, in the short space of four years."
Explore more quotes by Noam Chomsky
"States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions."
"In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival."
"The other day I happened to be reading a careful, interesting account of the state of British higher education. The government is a kind of market-oriented government and they came out with an official paper, a 'White Paper' saying that it is not the responsibility of the state to support any institution that can't survive in the market. So, if Oxford is teaching philosophy, the arts, Greek history, medieval history, and so on, and they can't sell it on the market, why should they be supported? Because life consists only of what you can sell in the market and get back, nothing else. That is a real pathology."
"That comes to about one hundred million people in India alone from 1947 to 1980. But we don't call that a crime of democratic capitalism. If we were to carry out that calculation throughout the world. I wont even talk about it. But Sen is correct; they're not intended, just like the Chinese famine wasn't intended. But they are ideological and institutional crimes, and capitalist democracy and its advocates are responsible for them, in whatever sense supporters of so-called Communism are responsible for the Chinese famine. We don't have the entire responsibility, but certainly a large part of it."
"There are two problems for our species' survival - nuclear war and environmental catastrophe - and we're hurtling towards them. Knowingly."
"Humans have certain properties and characteristics which are intrinsic to them, just as every other organism does. That's human nature."
"When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: "Why do I care if my high school's team wins the football game? I don't know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me... why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense." But the point is, it does make sense: It's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports."
"Willingness to be puzzled is a valuable trait to cultivate, from childhood to advanced inquiry."
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