Noam Chomsky Quotes

The Occupy Wall Street protests at last suggest that America's wealth gap is once again becoming an organizing political principle in the country.

I think the Occupy movement is absolutely fantastic; in my opinion, it's probably one of the most important people's movements of the 21st century and the 20th century. The trouble is that nobody really wants to support what they represent. They are too 'grassroots' for their own good.

I say to the Occupy protesters - you're occupying the wrong place, you're protesting the wrong thing.

The issue of wealth inequality is ... the great moral issue of our time.

So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings, goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury, and make sharper the contest between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.

This country is very good at creating wealth, but not very good at distributing it.

Inequality of income is bad for everyone, not just the poor and the middle class.

Liberty is impossible if 36 thousand families at the top of the economic pyramid get as much income as 12 million families at the bottom.

The Occupy movement is - it was a big surprise.

It would, I think, be hard for anyone to make the case that the United States is a just society or anything close to a just society. In America today, there is massive injustice in terms of income and wealth inequality. Injustice is rampant.

We need to start talking about inequality again; we need to start talking about the inequities and unfairnesses and the injustices of an excessively divided society, divided by wealth, by opportunity, by outcome, by assets and so forth.

In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.

I've been saying the Occupy Movement has got the ball rolling, and now we need to take the fight to the great indoors!

We cannot afford to leave the poor behind.

The thing about Occupy is that the sentiment the movement embodies is timeless: Don't be greedy, share.

Occupy Wall Street is a real movement.

Economic growth doesn't mean anything if it leaves people out.

Obviously, I have certain policy positions that I push and advocate for that would benefit people dealing in a system that breeds inequality and makes life more difficult for people.

It's not my fault that there is this gap between rich and poor, it is the fault of governments. I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter.

I have been unsure, from the start, what the Occupy movement was all about, although I did suspect that it was just fatuous, anti-enterprise, left-wingery.

It would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying them.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.

The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 20th century.