Noam Chomsky Quotes

Society and the system and politicians don't want people to be aware of things. They want people to believe what they have to show 'em.

The respected intellectuals are those who conform and serve power interests.

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.

In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

It's the nature of Hollywood that there are the people in power and the people who tell them what they want them to hear.

Some of mankind's most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.

Society is made of words, whose meanings the powerful control, or try to.

We have a free society, and the totalitarian states are dungeons. We have totally different methods of population control…. We can’t control people so we have to control what they think.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.

Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom.

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.

Political correctness kills discussion.

There are certain things that they say you can't do, there are all these secret people behind the scenes who make things available for you to do. That's why you have so much crime and violence.

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

That's the heart of it: My shows were not that controversial with the American people. They were controversial with the people who think for the American people.

Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable.

I think that when we start thought-policing people and idea-policing people, then that's crossing a line. And I think, you know, everybody's so afraid of this imaginary line of thought police that they forget their own personal safety.

Just in general, any government throughout history hasn't really wanted its people to be educated, because then they couldn't control them as easily.

Some people still believe you should just fall in line with what's going on - and that's scary. It makes a mockery of freedom of speech.

It's so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked.

You can't come out on a record dissing the system and be on a label that's connected to the system.

Wherever you see a man who gives someone else's corruption, someone else's prejudice as a reason for not taking action himself, you see a cog in The Machine that governs us.

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.

Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally.