Noam Chomsky Quotes

I was a victim of what most people are a victim of, which is really, really just gulping down what was being fed to me by the media.

Intellectual respectability required mental health, and it was becoming evident to me by then that "mental health" consisted of trusting everyone about everything as much as possible - and, for good measure, poking fun at anyone who didn't. Especially to be trusted were the mass media, whose owners and personnel were not to be regarded as minions of the Establishment because, as they themselves used to attest with confidence, there was no Establishment in the United States of America. Only foreigners and paranoids believed (otherwise).

The media is either our salvation or our death.

You cannot get through the density of the propaganda with which the American people, through the dreaded media, have been filled and the horrible public educational system we have for the average person. It's just grotesque.

The establishment and their media enablers will control over America through means that are very well known. Anyone who challenges their control is deemed a sexist, a racist, a xenophobe, and morally deformed.

Foolish people follow the system, get caught up in media news, what the government wants you to believe and all the higher powers want you to believe, and go down the same path as all the sheep in the cattle market.

Television is an instrument which can paralyze this country.

Whoever controls the media—the images—controls the culture.

Ever since Gutenberg, every dynasty, every political leader, every major religion, has recognized that to control the media is to have a powerful instrument for controlling the values and behavior of a population.

The press ... is but the servant of human intellect and its ministry is for good or evil, according to the character of those who direct it. The press is a mill that grinds all that is put into its hopper. Fill the hopper with poisoned grain and it will grind it to meal, but there is death in the bread.

The state must not ... let itself be confused by the drivel about so-called "freedom of the press," ... it must make sure of this instrument of popular education, and place it in the service of the state.

History must only guess at the effect that television would have had during earlier conflicts over the future of the nation.

Newspapers form public opinion, but public opinion also influences newspapers. The general masses are not like horses that can be tamed and trained to do their masters bidding.

The primary purpose of the media is to mobilize support for the controlling interests.

The hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen, and the far spread magazine, rules the country.

If those in charge of our society – politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television – can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.

I hate television, but that's me. It's like sucking your thumb. It's a wonderful thing for keeping the masses enslaved.

The American media wants to pump you full of fear.

The easiest way to propagandize people is to let a propaganda theme go in through an entertainment picture when people do not realize they are being propagandized.

The media is so powerful.

Pundits are always blaming TV for making people stupid, movies for desensitizing the world to violence, and rock music for making kids take drugs and kill themselves. These things should be the least of our worries. The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy. There is no 'normal,' because everybody is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously.

If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

Do you know we are ruled by T.V.?

The most political decision you make is where you direct people's eyes. In other words, what you show people, day in and day out, is political...And the most politically indoctrinating thing you can do to a human being is to show him, every day, that there can be no change.

Politicians are propaganda, the people with guns are the enforcers and the media is the enthusiastic lapdog who enables the entire behavior and acts as the verbal abuser against those who deviate from nodding their heads at the vast statues of evil that we inherited.