Noam Chomsky Quotes

Listen, 'The Purge' actually exists in some form or another in many places around the world when you think about it.

By any definition, what happened in Bhutan in the years 1989-93 was ethnic cleansing. The Bhutanese government denies this and has refused to repatriate any of those forcibly expelled.

Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely thrust into the political unconscious can sovereignty feel secure.

They [the communists] destroyed the best people; they destroyed the peasants.

This case serves as an appalling reminder of the evils that result when large numbers of the politically powerless are placed at the mercy of institutions engendered and controlled by a politically powerful few.

If god is the root cause for our degradation destroy that god. If it is religion destroy it. If it is Manu Darma, Gita, or any other Mythology (Purana), burn them to ashes. If it is temple, tank, or festival, boycott them. Finally if it is our politics, come forward to declare it openly

Unlike 30 years ago, people now admire the wealth of the West and lament the poverty of China; they stare awestruck at the power of the Western armies and scorn the cowardice of the Imperial troops; they enjoy the fairness and ease of the Customs and detest the fault-finding of China’s own tax collectors; they praise the orderly governance of the Western-Administered cities, and resent the harassment of our officials, big and small.

Every time there has been an effort by the Haitian people to overcome the misery and poverty that comes from 200 years of bitter attacks, really bitter, the U.S. steps in and blocks it.

If you take a look at the breaches of rights, whether it's the underfunding of education or health care, and all these issues which accentuate the poverty of Canada's indigenous people, and the lack of reaction to them - it becomes clear that if Canadians understood what's at stake, they wouldn't stand for it.

The Kurds had always had a bad time. They were oppressed by the Ottoman empire. Then, at the end of the First World War, they were promised a homeland, but the new Turkish state refused to give them any land, while the British went and created the new state of Iraq and sent aircraft to bomb the Kurds there into submission.

Christians … had come through razing the towns and carrying off half the men and all the women and boys.

Keeping people on the margins of cultural, social and political life constitutes in many nations one of the most glaring injustices of our time.

…In certain parts of Latin America, the seizure of the vast majority of the wealth by an oligarchy of owners bereft of social consciousness, the practical absence or the shortcomings of a rule of law, military dictators making a mockery of elementary human rights, the corruption of certain powerful officials, the savage practices of some foreign capital interests constitute factors which nourish a passion for revolt among those who thus consider themselves the powerless victims of a new colonialism in the technological, financial, monetary, or economic order.

[Turks] one and all, bag and baggage, shall I hope clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned.

This is an fascist society. We have to change its authoritarian structure …. And in the process we have to let a lot of people get away with crimes.

First, the urban guerrilla must use ... violence ... to win a popular base. Then the government has no alternative except to intensify repression. The police roundups, house searches, arrests of innocent people make life ... unbearable. The general sentiment is that the government is unjust, incapable of solving problems and resorts ... to the physical liquidation of its opponents ...

Every opponent to socialism should consciously investigate if he, when he lived in hopeless poverty and humiliation, also would be an opponent to socialism

[There is] no Indian problem as created by the Indian himself. Every problem that exists today in regard to the Indian population is due to the white man’s cast of mind.

Another doctrine, worse still is gaining ground. It is that the colored people are not sufficiently informed to chose what is best for themselves, and that they ought to be compelled to go to Africa. Many colonizationists now avow it openly. And thus there is danger that the society will grow up into one of the most dreadful systems of cruelty that have ever afflicted the world.

There are two things we don’t like to talk about: bad government and bad culture.

I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.

You are the President of this country. Come to Dhaka, come and see how our poor Bengali people have been mown down by your bullets, how the laps of our mothers and sisters have been robbed and left empty and bereft, how my helpless people have been slaughtered. Come, I said, come and see for yourself and then be the judge and decide

I am concerned that many young people in the Hemisphere seem to envision the United States as a nation intoxicated by power, addicted to warfare, controlled by a military-industrial complex, and determined to preserve the status quo, that we are against rapid economic and social growth.

People always suffer for what governments have done.

American democracy is a failure. It is a miserable failure. It has failed because it is a limited and racial and divisible democracy …. How can we fight for democracy in Burma, a country we have not seen, when we don't have democracy in Birmingham, a city we have seen.