Noam Chomsky Quotes

When you start to look at Native American history, you realize that, very far from being a peaceful, morally superior people, Native Americans were not that different from Europeans.

Polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people.

When African-Americans come to France, the French show them more consideration than they would show an African or a Black Caribbean. When African-Americans come to France, the French people are like, 'Oh, wow. Oh my God.' But if it's an African, they're like, 'Whatever.' It's all because of the past, because of our history.

English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.

I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.

The British have never historically thought of themselves as being European. The average Britain has much more in common with an American than with a Frenchman.

Deep down, the ordinary Frenchman doesn't believe that Turks, or Eastern Europeans for that matter, cherish the values he holds most dear. Nor do the French much trust that the Germans and the British have French interests at heart. Given European history -- and given what I see around me -- I can't say I blame them.

Asians love technology. They see it as the path to a good life. This is not so in Europe where there is much skepticism about technology—maybe because of Nazi Germany and its use of technology.

Civic rationality and modern capitalism triumphed in the medieval northern European cities – but not in Chinese, Indian or Muslim cities

Our history is responsible for the differences in the South African way of life.

Never since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now.

Indian classical music was born when time barely existed. It developed further within the structures of royal courts and a system of patronage where the ruler or the feudal master determined all.

Slave narratives had their greatest influence on public opinion and on literature in the U.S. between 1830 and 1860. After Reconstruction's defeat, their urgency of tone was replaced by the softer one of reminiscence.

I used to ask myself why American universities are financed through endowments. Now I know: During the early days of America, the state was poor and when citizens wanted to set something up, they needed to collect money themselves. Historically, this was different in Europe. There used to be a strong state, a monarch or a king. He provided money.

The institutional scene in which American man has developed has lacked that accumulation from intervening stages which has been so dominant a feature of the European landscape.

This (Vietnam) was a land of rebellious barons. It was like Europe in the Middle Ages. But what were the Americans doing here? Columbus had not yet discovered their country.

Nations are an historic reality in Europe. They all have different histories, and they joined the EU at very different times and under widely differing circumstances. I was mayor of Warsaw for three years and always in favor of Poland joining the EU. But I also experienced how we had to implement EU regulations that were completely inappropriate to our situation.

The U.S. is different from Europe and other industrial countries.

Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy.

Feudal Europe is over, but it found its way into film culture. It found its way into postmodern painting culture, and we're all here talking about it today. It still lives. I don't believe in ghosts, but these are contemporary ghosts.

Should an anthropologist or a sociologist be looking for a bizarre society to study, I would suggest he come to Ulster. It is one of Europe's oddest countries. Here, in the middle of the twentieth century, with modern technology transforming everybody's lives, you find a medieval mentality that is being dragged painfully into the eighteenth century by some forward-looking people.

As Littlewood said to me once [of the ancient Greeks], they are not clever school boys or "scholarship candidates," but "Fellows of another college."

I see Donald Trump as a phenomenon of an expression of certain fears, certain resentments, that have been a running thread in American history.

If the people in Europe are SOOOOOO smart, how come so many of them can't seem to locate the deodorant, huh?

When I was growing up, we learned our history almost as lives of the saints. And it came as a shock, "Oh, Jefferson had slaves?" It always comes as a shock to us that elevation to the White House didn't somehow cleanse them of all their deep character flaws.