Noam Chomsky Quotes

The indoctrination is so deep that educated people think they’re being objective.

Younger people who are being indoctrinated into the contemporary system of falsification - they really have to do some research to find out what is the truth. In the general population, people forget or don't care that much. And gradually what you hear drilled into your head everyday comes to be believed. People don't understand what you're talking about any more if you discuss the American war on South Vietnam.

Propaganda is amazing. People can be led to believe anything.

And everything is controlled and everybody is a member of some committee, because then their watchdogs placed in the committees can control everything, what this person says or how this person think(s), you know.

People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to.

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

Democratic societies can't force people. Therefore they have to control what they think.

We tend to believe our own propaganda a little too completely.

They're feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are dying.

In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.

Honestly, it’s so easy to get what you want from people if they think you’re a psycho.

All it takes is one generation to brainwash a population and convince them that reality doesn't exist

Uninformed people can be easily manipulated.

Millions of people are getting the vote, and we have to educate them to keep them from our throats. In other words, we have to train them in obedience and servility, so they're not going to think through the way the world works and come after our throats.

A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.

I think I could create a cult, no problem. The hard part is getting people to kill themselves.

We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God.

The technique of infamy is to start two lies at once and get people arguing heatedly over which is the truth.

The public is gullible. ... If [many satirists are] making the same joke, that's the danger. Then there's a solidifying effect and it becomes a truth.

In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.

Two-thirds of American movies are extensions of commercials -- they tell you how to feel and they tell you how to think -- rather than letting you figure it out on your own.

Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think?

The best way to compel weak-minded people to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all others, by magnifying their danger.

If the people that believed the moon landing was staged on a movie lot had access to unlimited money from large carbon polluters or some other special interest who wanted to confuse people into thinking that the moon landing didn't take place, I'm sure we'd have a robust debate about it right now.