Noam Chomsky Quotes

No one can be truly powerful unless he has access to the command of major institutions, for it is over these institutional means of power that the truly powerful are, in the first instance, truly powerful...

Autonomy is the whole thing; it's what unhappy people are missing. They have given the power to run their lives to other people.

We don't go for segregation. We go for separation. Separation is when you have your own. You control your own economy; you control your own politics; you control your own society; you control your own everything.

Philip is being very vocal about it. For me, I don't think the story isn't at all anti-religious in any way. I think what's it more against is the control and the misuse of power that any organised religion, or any political organisation exercises over the people they're supposed to represent. I think that, for me, is what's important in the movie.

Our whole evolution has reached a stage where nearly every man is either ruler or ruled; sometimes he is both. By this the attitude of dependence has been greatly strengthened, for a truly free man does not like to play the part of either the ruler or the ruled. He is, above all, concerned with making his inner values and personal powers effective in a way as to permit him to use his own judgment in all affairs and to be independent in action.

I don't know how to run your life. I don't know how to run your life. I don't have the authority to run your life. And the Constitution doesn't permit me to run your life.

I don't care how poor and inefficient a little country is - they like to run their own business. I know men that would -make my wife a better husband than I am but, darn it, I'm not going to give her to 'em.

The music industry is so tied up politically. They're afraid they might let other voices in.

If the government fails to listen to your demands, then you will decide what is best for you.

Because you look at it, you know, and there's basically one set of rules that protect that industrial ruling class. That's what the governments do, that's what the religions do. They protect the interests of that industrial ruling class.

Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as right in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as brute force.

Democracy means doing whatever you want without asking permission of anybody but your boss, your doctor, your lawyer, your landlord, your bank, your city, your state and federal authorities, and your wife and children.

High level policy makers and program managers do not normally listen to the voices of local people, local providers and local program managers when they make decisions about contraceptive introduction or other aspects of program development in reproductive health.

Why should I give someone else such power over my life?

What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn't only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression

A man must feel he runs things, but as long as you control yourself, you control him.

Scotland's voice has to be heard

Wealth held by a class and used ambitiously becomes as despotic as an absolute monarchy, and has in its hands manners, customs, laws, institutions, and governments themselves.

I'm not leaving the fight just because I decided not to run. I'm going to expand my political action committee and volunteer for it. I'm going to do lots of other things where I will have a voice. So I'm not leaving the fight.

A real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation [...] He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribed in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.

You could really belong to a group of people and with other people, you could really make some significant changes - through the electoral process, of course, by registering people to vote, and by supporting good people who were running for office. For me, it was like I had found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

If I can't run my neighborhood you won't want me in your neighborhood.

You don't become completely free by just avoiding being a slave; you also need to avoid becoming a master.

To be free, the workers must have choice. To have choice they must retain in their own hands the right to determine under what conditions they will work.

A free man must not be told how to think, either by the government or by social activists. He may certainly be shown the right way, but he must not accept being forced into it.