Noam Chomsky Quotes

Wherever you see a man who gives someone else's corruption, someone else's prejudice as a reason for not taking action himself, you see a cog in The Machine that governs us.

The most express declarations and reservations are necessary to protect the just rights and liberty of mankind from the silent, powerful and ever active conspiracy of those who govern.

The law, unfortunately, has always been retained on the side of power; laws have uniformly been enacted for the protection and perpetuation of power.

Those in power always try to distort reality, to suit their needs and keep things safe.

Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humilation and misery. Injustice sustained at the exact degree of necessary tension to turn the cogs of the huge machine-for-the-making-of-rich-men, without bursting the boiler.

A lot of authority figures want to be good. I sense that, and yet at the same time I sense that authority, after a while, always leads to some kind of oppression. When the minority report comes in, what you do is run the minority out of town with a flaming cross. It's just the way things are.

For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.

I think society is both something that's very real and very powerful, but on the whole quite problematic.

I think people have to recognise that the traditional modes of authority weren't that great.

'White America' is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies.

Too often, systems of oppression turn those who are the targets of the oppression against one another.

Every government that exists -- or ever existed, or ever will exist -- is a kleptocracy, meaning "rule by thieves". Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce.

Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how to react to being kicked.

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

Men in authority tend to abuse it – not all men, but many.

If you give human beings power over others, their natural tendency is to be fascists.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

We have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great political parties for power and plunder, while grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon the suffering people. We charge that the controlling influences dominating both these parties have permitted the existing dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them.

The South politician preaches to the poor white man, "You got more than the blacks, don't complain. You're better than them, you been born with white skin," they explain. And the Negro's name Is used, it is plain, For the politician's gain, As he rises to fame And the poor white remains On the caboose of the train; But it ain't him to blame -- He's only a pawn in their game.

… the unjust institutions which work so much misery and suffering to the masses have their root in governments, and owe their whole existence to the power derived from government.

Democracy is always a threat to the powerful.

Poor people are too stupid to know they're just chess pieces in a game.

Only a woman can tell you what it's like to be a woman in a society where men are in charge. When you have one demographic that controls the livelihood of minorities, then you're always going to have abuses of power. So this goes way beyond Hollywood.

There are forms of oppression and domination which become invisible - the new normal.

In a state of poverty, illiteracy, people just remain exposed to all kinds of manipulation. That's what we have lived. It's easier to tell a poor person, 'You know what, you are poor, you're hungry because the other one has taken away your rights.'