Noam Chomsky Quotes

Some communist countries think that free enterprise will save them the same way that they thought communism would save them.

Since the end of the 1970s, free-market capitalism has been in, and socialism has been out.

Water is not free anymore. Our resources were free at one time, but now they are not. Everything is getting controlled by big corporations. I'm most worried about this.

While free markets tend to democratize a society, unfettered capitalism leads invariably to corporate control of government.

Capitalism, communism ... it's all garbage.

I can prophecy that your grandchildren in America will live under socialism -- Our firm conviction is that sooner or later Capitalism will give way to Socialism. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.

Capitalism itself is not to be condemned. And surely it is not vicious of its very nature, but it has been vitiated.

[I]n communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.

Capitalism and socialism are two distinct patterns of social organization. Private control of the means of production and public control are contradictory notions and not merely contrary notions. There is no such thing as a mixed economy, a system that would stand midway between capitalism and socialism.

Less than seventy-five years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won.

The foundation of any and every civilization, including our own, is private ownership of the means of production. Whoever wishes to criticize modern civilization, therefore, begins with private property.

Neoliberal ideology is enormously powerful.

Look, in neoliberalism the ruling elite understand something.

Private property is a means, and neither its abolition nor its unrestricted right should be an end in itself.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It may be better than all the other systems, but it's not a perfect system.

I see myself, in terms of the question of capitalism, as I would support democratic socialism over a capitalist system, because any approach... or participatory economics, which is another great model that people like Michael Albert are putting out there... any system that encourages us to think about interdependency, and to be able to use the world's resources in a wiser way, for the good of the whole, would be better for the world than capitalism.

I don't know much about Capitalism, but I do know about Democracy and freedom, and if Capitalism may change in many, many ways, I'm not really very much interested in Capitalism.

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.

You must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business.

For it is an essential difference between capitalist and socialist production that under capitalism men provide for themselves, while under Socialism they are provided for.

Capitalism is like this fractal thing where anything that contains an element of capitalism anywhere inside it is just something that turns into capitalism. It is an incredibly defeatist attitude. If you choose to look at reality that way, I suppose you can, but you have to do enormous violence to reality to do so consistently.

If production be capitalistic in form, so, too, will be reproduction.

There is simply no other choice than this: either to abstain from interference in the free play of the market, or to delegate the entire management of production and distribution to the government. Either capitalism or socialism: there exists no middle way.

I'm not a Communist. I'm an American. I'm a capitalist. I mean, I'm not a very good capitalist, myself. I'm not very good at it, but it's not that I'm not for capitalism. But people who believe in things like corporate citizenship, it's idiotic. I mean, it shows you're an idiot.

Capitalism gives all of us a great opportunity if we seize it with both hands and hang on to it.