Noam Chomsky Quotes

The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term ...to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

We definitely experience racism in England and different levels of oppression as well. Anywhere affected by colonialism there's certain kinds of race relations and class relations going on.

New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillacs, and beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.

The doctrine of thrift for the poor is dumb and cruel, like advising them to try and lift themselves by their bootstraps.

The dark ghettos are social, political, educational and-above all-economic colonies. Their inhabitants are subject peoples, victims of the greed, cruelty, insensitivity, guilt, and fear of their masters.

We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you're looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York.

This country is a nation of thieves. It stole everything it has, beginning with black people. The U.S. cannot justify its existence as the policeman of the world any longer. I do not want to be a part of the American pie. The American pie means raping South Africa, beating Vietnam, beating South America, raping the Philippines, raping every country you’ve been in. I don’t want any of your blood money. I don’t want to be part of that system. We must question whether or not we want this country to continue being the wealthiest country in the world at the price of raping everybody else.

Behind the deceptive words designed to entice people into supporting violence -- words like democracy, freedom, self-defense, national security -- there is the reality of enormous wealth in the hands of a few, while billions of people in the world are hungry, sick, homeless.

The stark and tragic images of human suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina have reminded us yet again that civil rights and equal rights are still the great unfinished business of America. The suffering has been disproportionately borne by the weak, the poor, the elderly and infirm, and largely African-Americans, who were forced by poverty, illness, unequal opportunity to stay behind and bear the brunt of the storm's winds and floods. I believe that kind of disparate impact is morally wrong in this, the richest country in the world.

There is a structural difference between the way that Europe views Israel, and America views Israel. The European view is informed by the importance of colonialism in Europe's past. So for Europeans we are like Belgiums in the Congo, or the French in Alger, or the British in India. Strange interlopers in somebody else's land. But in fact, we [Israeli] have been here for 4,000 years. This is our ancestral homeland.

Everyone knows that the Zionist regime is a tool in the hands of the United States and British governments.

The way in which the vast mass of the poor are treated by modern society is truly scandalous. They are herded into great cities where they breathe a fouler air than in the countryside which they have left.

The greatest weapon the colonial powers have used in the past against our people has always been his ability to divide and conquer. If I take my hand and slap you, it might sting you because these digits are separated. But all I have to do to put you back in your place is bring those digits together.

For rich people, the sky is just an extra, a gift of nature. The poor, on the other hand, can see it as it is, a gift of infinite grace.

For the criminal who is weak and poor the narrow cell of death awaits; but honor and glory await the rich who conceal their crimes behind their gold and silver and inherited glory.

And yet the world we live in-its divisions and conflicts, its widening gap between rich and poor, its seemingly inexplicable outbursts of violence-is shaped far less by what we celebrate and mythologize than by the painful events we try to forget. Leopold's Congo is but one of those silences of history.

The devil wipes his breech with poor folks' pride.

Nobody should be hitting lotto for 36 million dollars when we got people starving in the streets. That is not idealistic, that's just real. That is just stupid. There's no way Michael Jackson, or whoever should have thousands, millions, billions of dollars and we got people broke with two-three jobs and still can't pay bills on time. There's no way! No way these people should have planes when people don't have houses, apartments, shacks, drawers, pants!!!

There is one rule that works in every calamity. Be it pestilence, war, or famine, the rich get richer and poor get poorer. The poor even help arrange it.

The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past.

No matter how accomplished we may be, just any little white person can come up and say, 'Well, you wouldn't be here, if it weren't for Affirmative Action.' You put power in white people's hands, and then they use it against you. It's a trick bag.

The dainties of the great are the teares of the poore.

Ninety-seven percent of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 are white men, and what they do radiates all the way down into poor areas and cities around our country. Like predatory lending and misallocation of municipal services. These guys get municipal service, poor areas don't. So they run the economy into the ground, and who suffers the most? The poor pay more and they die earlier.

The problem is not just affirmative action, though. The problem is poor people, working people and their children, and affirmative action for the most part doesn't even apply to them.