Noam Chomsky Quotes

To the very limited extent that I have a political consciousness, to some extent I'm a lazy, apolitical sort of guy that just flits around.

Electoral turnout is falling among the young, and political apathy is on the rise.

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.

I honestly have no interest in politics; I don't think I could ever get into politics.

Authoritarian leadership and therefore a lack of democracy have led to a certain apathy among the people, to a sort of civil nihilism, a skepticism.

Increased town size hurts real democracy in two ways. First… it dramatically reduces the percentage of citizens who attend town meetings. Second, town size increases the number of citizens who attend, which dramatically reduces the percentage of these attendees who participate.”

Turning politics into a spectator sport is one of the subtle processes which supports globalization. It converts or transforms the citizen from an actor to a spectator, with illusions of participation.

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference and undernourishment.

In many respects we now live in a society that is only formally democratic, as the great mass of citizens have minimal say on the major public issues of the day, and such issues are scarcely debated at all in any meaningful sense in the electoral arena

The possibility that I will ever be drawn into political activity is so remote as to be negligible.

I'm in no way suggesting that my opinion matters more than anyone else's, of course, but the only thing that bothers me is apathy. People that sit out of the process and complain about it, or pretend that politics isn't a part of their everyday lives.

Not voting is not a protest. It is a surrender.

I don't talk about politics much. I don't care for it.

I've never bought the argument that people are apathetic about politics.

Where everyman is participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year but everyday, he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte.

Young people need to re-engage with politics. The life of democracy depends on it. We've left it to the stuff shirts, and obviously they haven't been minding the store.

How do we protect the soul of democracy against bad theology in service of an imperial state?

The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people.

I can concede that the government has no knowledge of the people, but I believe the people know less of the government. There are useless officials, evil, if you like, but there are also good ones, and these are not able to accomplish anything because they encounter an inert mass, the population that takes little part in matters that concern them.

In actual fact those who do not care for politics and sit on the fence do indeed side for a political party: The ruling party.

That's always been the case in America; there's been a big spectrum in how much people are interested in American politics.

During the 1960s, large groups of people who are normally passive and apathetic began to try to enter the political arena to press their demands.... The naive might call that democracy, but that's because they don't understand. The sophisticated understand that that's the crisis of democracy.

The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn't represent the people. It controls them.

The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life - this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.

In civil and political affairs, American women take no interest or concern, except so far as they sympathize with their family and personal friends; but in all cases, in which they do feel a concern, their opinions and feelings have a consideration, equal or even superior, to that of the other sex.