Noam Chomsky Quotes

What Mr. [Robert F.] Kennedy says lacks only the merit of being true ... Bobby Kennedy can jump off the capital dome or whatever else he has to do to get the attention of the American people.

The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC [End Poverty in California]. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them.

Today, you've got hedge fund billionaires aligned with Karl Rove, running ads against me to try to get Democrats to vote for you [Bernie Sanders]. I know this game. I'm going to stop this game.

Nixon's genius was that he was able to portray himself as the toughest of the anti-communists, and yet run on a platform that he had a plan to end the Vietnam War. And, of course, his plan was to prolong it until his second election - but he didn't tell us that then.

I believe this was [Margaret Thatcher] estimate of the voter: "These people are so stupid that they will vote for me because they think I know how to run the household."

I did love that scene in the movie [ "Our Brand Is Crisis"] because it's like "The Wizard of Oz." You see the backstage action of politics. You have access to see behind the curtain. You see how it's all one big advertisement.

You run an ad claiming that [Mitt] Romney is an absolute unfeeling, mean-spirited animal hater because in the example they gave he put his dog on the roof of the station wagon during the family vacation. Why does it work? Why did it stick?And there is an answer.When they [Democrates] ran the ads about guy's wife dying with cancer...? Remember this? This was a serious series of ads, and it was deadly effective.

I watched the way Hillary Clinton talk now about how lovely everything is and how wonderful she is. It doesn't work that way. She was after him, she was trying to - she even sent out or her campaign sent out pictures of him in a certain garb, very famous pictures. I don't think she can deny that.

The most powerful weapon deployed by the Clintons is the corporate media, the press.

If you're going to run for president as the anti-Clinton, you should know that Democrats and their media friends will do whatever it takes to make you look Clintonian... The questions won't go away because Democrats are desperate to define Republican deviancy down to Clinton levels. The ugliness is just getting started.

Why is it that when political ammunition runs low, inevitably the rusty artillery of abuse is always wheeled into action?

Her Majesty's government is engaging not merely in Orwellian Newspeak but in self-defeating Orwellian Newspeak. The broader message it sends is that ours is a weak culture so unconfident and insecure that if you bomb us and kill us our first urge is to find a way to flatter and apologize to you.

There may be evidence the Russians are trying to tamper with elections. The Russians are trying to infiltrate everything we do, and they've succeeded. They've infiltrated Hollywood, they've infiltrated our universities, probably try to infiltrate elections by who knows what. But the idea that there is evidence that Putin was actively trying to elect Trump, there isn't a morsel of evidence for that, yet it shows up. The truth of the matter is that Putin doesn't care who runs the United States. It doesn't matter to him.

I just find this interesting that Ronald Reagan was regarded much the way Donald Trump is except Reagan was governor of California. He had run for the nomination the Republican Party in '76. But he was laughed at. They thought he was dumb then. They thought he was slow minded and dim-witted back then. They thought he couldn't speak. They thought Reagan - amazingly, a guy that later became known as the Great Communicator - couldn't speak.

When you're running for president you have to take some risks and you've got to show people something fresh and you've got to stay interesting.

Remember, when you hear them beginning to say "freedom" look carefully-. see who it is they want you to butcher.

I've looked at all of Hitler's speeches thinking that there's gotta be one where he's 'I'm Hitler!', but there weren't any. His speeches were all about hope and prosperity - he ran on a platform of peace and prosperity. Hitler speeches that makes him sound like a villain are pretty hard to find, he was very detached from what he was doing, he kept himself compartmentalised from it.

We have made the Reich by propaganda

Because of the spin-meisters and the focus groups and the way politics is run now. It's run by polls and focus groups. So it's even more true today, I think, than it was some 40 years ago.

An information operations team was sent to Afghanistan to conduct various psychological operations on the Afghans and Taliban. The team was then asked not to focus on the Taliban but on manipulating senators into giving more funds and troops [to the war].

We know that a government shutdown is gonna blamed on the Republicans no matter who, what, when, where, why. You want to give the media ammo going into 2018, how the Republicans hate government, the Republicans hate you, the Republicans want you dead, the Republicans want your kids dead, the Republicans want you breathing dirty air, poisoned water, and all this stuff, a shutdown in September, it would actually be in October, because that's - I don't mean to pick hairs here, but a shutdown would be in October if it happens.

The media cannot come separate [Donald] Trump from his supporters. Only Trump can do that. They're trying, they're gonna keep trying because they think they can. They did it with [George W.]Bush. They did it with [Mitt] Romney. They did it with [John] McCain. They did it with Bob Dole.

It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying; if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.

President George] Bush talked to us like we were a bunch of morons and we ate it up. Can you imagine, the Pledge of Allegiance, read my lips-can you imagine such crap in this day and age?

That's why they (the Bush administration) had to make up that story about weapons of mass destruction. Because that was the only thing that would sell to the American people, and that wasn't true.