Noam Chomsky Quotes

It only takes a day to change someone from an anti-intellectual to an intellectual by persuading him that he might be one!

Large skepticism leads to large understanding. Small skepticism leads to small understanding. No skepticism leads to no understanding.

Research has been called good business, a necessity, a gamble, a game. It is none of these - it's a state of mind.

Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.

I want to show people it's not elitist to be a deep thinker.

Never categorize yourself, society does that to you, don't do it to yourself.

The rare person is still interested in new advances when they are adults. There is possibly a correlation with intelligence. In any case, you have to be fairly bright to keep learning and changing attitudes as you get older.

I am probably a pseudo-intellectual.

To have a very strong opinion all the time is corrosive to a person's intellect. It becomes your default position.

I've never professed to be an intellectual. I don't try to be.

When it comes to art and science, people don't like a lot of either. Instead of being open to it, they're closed off about it.

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. … the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers

I just don't want to give anybody a reason to label me as something I'm not.

I reserve the right to think many different things and to change my mind and to even be wrong.

I think that people need a box to put people in to feel okay, but I'm just not like that.

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

The thing with labels is they're not for you, they're for other people. Like labels are just a word for other people to understand you and that's it.

The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.

Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.

Americans seem sometimes to believe that if you are a thinker you must be a frowning bore, because thinking is so damn serious.

Intellectualism came very late to America. That's why Americans are so proud of it. I found very few real intellectuals in America. But there are so many pseudo-intellectuals.

By playing games you can artificially speed up your learning curve to develop the right kind of thought processes.