Noam Chomsky Quotes

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

[Moral responsibilities] has nothing particular to do with academia, except insofar as those within it tend to be unusually privileged in the respects just mentioned.

If the history of the Day of Atonement has anything to say to us now it is: never relieve individuals of moral responsibility. The more we have, the more we grow.

If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.

Real morality is possible when the sanctions for morality are also tangible and real. Therefore, atheism shifts the basis of morality from faith in god to obligations of social living. Moral conduct is not a passport to heaven; it is social necessity.

Life is moral responsibility.

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty.

Do not consider anything for your interest which makes you break your word, quit your modesty or inclines you to any practice which will not bear the light or look the world in the face.

For no phase of life, whether public or private, whether in business or in the home, whether one is working on what concerns oneself alone or dealing with another, can be without its moral duty; on the discharge of such duties depends all that is morally right, and on their neglect all that is morally wrong in life.

But they who are unconcerned about the consequences of their actions are not therefore unconcerned about their actions.

We make every effort to see that our actions live up to our words and be vigilant with regards to our behavior.

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be. . . .

We tend to think that people are more to blame for their acts than for their omissions.

There's no question that as science, knowledge and technology advance, that we will attempt to do more significant things. And there's no question that we will always have to temper those things with ethics.

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

In just about every area of society, there's nothing more important than ethics.

Democracy without morality is impossible.

I have no regrets because I did everything by the book.

My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.

He who allows oppression shares the crime.

Every right implies a responsibility; Every opportunity, an obligation, Every possession, a duty.

I talk every day about doing the right thing.

Moral authority comes from following universal and timeless principles like honesty, integrity, treating people with respect.

We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities.

The measure of your quality as a public person, as a citizen, is the gap between what you do and what you say.