Noam Chomsky Quotes

I've never argued that humans are massively hot-wired. What I was trying to point out was that you can't understand how we learn unless you identify the learning mechanisms. And these have some genetic basis.

The most important thing to realize is we're not blank slates at birth. We don't start off with nothing in our heads, and then get imprinted entirely by our environment. There's something in our heads on the day we're born, and then we grow up and make choices.

However superficial prevailing views of heredity seem to be, it must be admitted that a person is indeed the bearer of inherited characteristics. This is the one aspect. He must often battle against these inherited traits and rid himself of them in order to bring to fulfillment the talents laid into him before he entered earthly existence.

I don't know if people are born with a worldview or if their thinking is a product of their environment.

Thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned.

I think you inherit most of your talent from your parents, although sometimes a fabulously talented singer grows out of the union of two tone-deaf people

In studying language we can discover many basic properties of this cognitive structure, its organization, and also the genetic predispositions that provide the foundation for its development. So in this respect, linguistics, first of all, tries to characterize a major feature of human cognitive organization. And second, I think it may provide a suggestive model for the study of other cognitive systems. And the collection of these systems is one aspect of human nature.

Two imbecile parents, whether related or not, have only imbecile offspring.

I believe in intelligence, and I believe also that there are inherited differences in intellectual ability, but I do not believe that intelligence is a simple scalar endowment that can be quanitified by attaching a single figure to it—an I.Q. or the like.

Contrary to what some parents might believe or hope for, children are not born a blank slate. Rather, they come into the world with predetermined abilities, proclivities and temperaments that nurturing parents may be able to foster or modify, but can rarely reverse.

I never take credit for anything, because it's mostly genetic to my way of thinking. Even the need to work hard with some genetic talent you're given - the need to go out and develop it, and push hard to bring it to people.

The more monies we spend, the less children learn; because the more machines we have there, the more gadgets, the more gimmicks, the less children have to really think - the less they have to use their innate abilities, their curiosity, their brains.

You can be born gay, but not because of your genetics, I think because of your subconscious more than your genetics. I think genetically, we're made to reproduce. We can't survive this route. Genetically, that's the way to go. Genetically, we have to reproduce, but subconsciously, and preferentially, you can be born with that.

Intelligence is something we are born with. Thinking is a skill that must be learned.

Thinking in pictures is, therefore, only a very incomplete form of becoming conscious. In some way, too, it stands nearer to unconscious processes than does thinking in words, and it is unquestionably older than the latter both ontogenetically and phylogenetically.

We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.

I had my father's mind, but he had his mother's mind. Fortunately, his mother lived with us and so I early realized that intellectual abilities of the kind I shared with my father and grandmother were not sex-linked.

I used to read more when I was a kid than I do now. It was all sort of fuel for the fire to teach you how to think and how to make things and it informed the architecture that I was doing. It's better coming in with that history and that kind of knowledge and depth of understanding of humanity that is very important for building buildings - for understanding people and how they should live and how you could make your lives better and stuff like that.

Education is everywhere, prompting one to think, to consider, to remember.

Possibilities are like cancer. The more I think about them, the more they multiply, and there's no way to stop them. I'm out of control.

This moment deserves your full attention, for it will not pass your way again.

Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and abilities.

Sexuality is such a taboo thing. I think it should be more out in the open, especially with young women. I think it's okay for them to explore their sexuality, as long as they own it and it's portrayed in the right way.

I think personally, I've always felt that the Association [NAACP] got itself hung-up in what I call its legal successes. Having had so many outstanding legal successes, it definitely seemed to have oriented its thinking in the direction that the way to achieve was through the courts.

I think we are affected by others in all kinds of ways. I do understand what it's like to wish to control the conditions under which we can be affected by other human beings, but none of us really are.