Noam Chomsky Quotes

The government assures the people that they are in danger from the invasion of another nation, or from foes in their midst, and that the only way to escape this danger is by the slavish obedience of the people to their government. This fact is seen most prominently during revolutions and dictatorships, but it exists always and everywhere that the power of the government exists.

History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior.

As I speak to you today, government censors somewhere are working furiously to erase my words from the records of history. But history itself has already condemned these tactics.

It is from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power. Only the strong can be free. And only the productive can be strong.

Workers ... do not eat legal rights but bread. History, especially recent history, gives much evidence to support the contention that men want security more than freedom and that for an indefinite time they may be successfully governed by a dictator who keeps in mind the maxim that 'contented cows give the best milk.'

Nondemocratic regimes imperil the security of the world. They stay in power by controlling their populations. This control invariably requires an increasing amount of repression. To justify this repression and maintain internal stability, external enemies must be manufactured.

The more a regime claims to be the embodiment of liberty the more tyrannical it is likely to be.

Dictatorship dooms labor. Labor dooms dictatorship.

In most of the countries where the people don’t like their government, we are now allowed to ask whether people like their government.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

An oppressive government is worse than a man-eating tiger.

The will of the nation" is one of those expressions which have been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age.

No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument — the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up, you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American

If ... America is to become an empire, there is very little chance that it can avoid becoming a virtual dictatorship as well.

The major conflicts of our day are autocrats verses the village square.

The spectacle which confronts all Europe today is a great conflict between democracy and dictatorship.

In the Middle East there are two methods of control: mass repression and mass bribery. In Syria they use mass repression; in Saudi Arabia, mass bribery. In Bahrain, a bit of both.

We are going through a fascistic time..

When demagogues and dictators ban art, this is the reason: art is the great solvent of obedient fundamentalism.

Every dictatorship has ultimately strangled in the web of repression it wove for its people, making mistakes that could not be corrected because criticism was prohibited.

Governments are based pincipally on force and deception. Democratic governments are based chiefly on deception, other governments on force. And democratic governments, if you get too uppity, give up on the deception and resort to brute force, as a lot of us found out in the sixites. Those who didn't find out in the sixites will find out in the near future because we're going to have a rerun.

The end of despots is always odd?exhilarating to those who suffered their tyrannies, and to those who hold despotism in contempt, and anti-climatic at the same time, the discovery that these tyrants were petty, frightened men after all.

Where books are burned in the end people will be burned too.

If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government.

To commit violent and unjust acts, it is not enough for a government to have the will or even the power; the habits, ideas and passions of the time must lend themselves to their committal.