Noam Chomsky Quotes

I am not sure just what Marx had in mind when he wrote that "philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." Did he mean that philosophy could change the world, or that philosophers should turn to the higher priority of changing the world? If the former, then he presumably meant philosophy in a broad sense of the term, including analysis of the social order and ideas about why it should be changed, and how. In that broad sense, philosophy can play a role, indeed an essential role, in changing the world.

The state is not abolished, it withers away.

... politics of meaning

… that veiled sister of communism – legalistic socialism

Communism was not only defined as the things that Marx and Lenin had advocated, but included anything that had the potential for change in the society.

Marxist ideology is wrong, but I have known many good people who are Marxists.

Undoubtedly, one comes closer to the truth when one sees history as the expression of the class struggle rather than a series of private quarrels among kings and nobles. But precisely because such an analysis of history comes closer to the truth, it is more dangerous. It gives the illusion of full knowledge; it supplies answers to all questions, answers which merely run around in a circle repeating a few formulas.

Philosophy has degenerated into ideology.

German Marxian's coined the dictum: If socialism is against human nature, then human nature must be changed.

I also dreamt about finally meeting the leftist Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. He is a great role model for me.

All I know is that I am not a Marxist.

Philosophy is, in the last instance, class struggle in the field of theory.

When I die Bookchinism comes to an end, and all the allusions to it both among Marxists and anarchists.

If Communism was liberalism in a hurry, liberalism is Communism in slow motion.

The world would not be in such a snarl, had Marx been Groucho instead of Karl.

All the revolutions have happened when a Fidel or Marx or Lenin or whatever, who were intellectuals, were able to get through to the workers. They got a good pocket of people together and the workers seemed to understand that they were in a repressed state.

Politics is how you think about life itself.

I am a socialist. However, I have to add that what I understand by socialism is exactly the opposite of what many people, or most people, today mean by socialism.

I have learned more from Hayek than from any other living thinker, except perhaps Alfred Tarski - but not even excepting Russell.

Cleansed of its leftist residues, anarchy - anarchism minus Marxism - will be free to get better at being what it is.

It's not my fault if reality is Marxist

Intellectuals resist faith longer because they can: where ordinary people are helpless before the light, intellectuals are clever enough to spin webs of darkness around their minds and hide in them. That's why only Ph.D.s believe any of the 100 most absurd ideas in the world such as Absolute Relativism, or the Objective Truth of Subjectivism, of the Meaningfulness of Meaninglessness and the Meaninglessness of Meaning, which is the best definition of Deconstructionism I know.

I suspect in Lenin's works there's everything, if you search well.

I believe in permanent revolution.

But Aristotle's philosophy was the intellect's Declaration of Independence.