Noam Chomsky

About the author

Noam Chomsky: Revolutionary Anarchist Thinker

Noam Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is an internationally recognized scholar, author, and political activist, primarily known for his work in the field of linguistics, where he pioneered the theory of transformational grammar.

Chomsky has written and lectured extensively on politics, and his radical activism and critiques of U.S. policy have made him a controversial figure. His political ideas often center around his advocacy for freedom and equality, arguing for a society that maximizes common good. Noam Chomsky's contribution to the anarchist movement revolves around the notion of libertarian socialism, also called anarcho-syndicalism. This idea is most prominently seen in his work 'Anarchy,' where he stresses that workers should directly control their economic lives. He is still alive, continuing his work and analysis on topical issues.

Date of Birth: December 7, 1928

Country of Birth: United States of America

Political Ideas: Libertarian Socialism

Quotes Available: 38

Quotes by Noam Chomsky

Stability means we run it. There are countries that are very stable. Cuba is stable, but that's not called stability.

We're supposed to worship Adam Smith but you're not supposed to read him. That's too dangerous. He's a dangerous radical.

As soon as one identifies, challenges and overcomes illegitimate power, he or she is an anarchist. Most people are anarchists.

For those who stubbornly seek freedom around the world, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination.

Non-violent resistance activities cannot succeed against an enemy that is able freely to use violence.

Go to any elite university and you are usually speaking to very disciplined people, people who have been selected for obedience.

I mean, "chaos" is a meaning of the word, but it's not a meaning that has any relevance to social thought. Anarchy as a social philosophy has never meant "chaos" - in fact, anarchists have typically believed in a highly organized society, just one that's organized democratically from below.

It makes a lot of sense, if you accept capitalist system, to try to accumulate property, not just because you want material welfare, but because that guarantees your freedom.

If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

The Cold War serves as a useful device for the managers of American society and their counterparts in the Soviet Union to control their own populations and their own respective imperial systems.

I consider it immoral to be a supporter of a power system.

Of course it's extremely easy to say, "The heck with it. I'm just going to adapt myself to the structures of power and authority and do the best I can within them." Sure, you can do that. But that's not acting like a decent person.

As early as World War I, American historians offered themselves to President Woodrow Wilson to carry out a task they called "historical engineering," by which they meant designing the facts of history so that they would serve state police.

In certain intellectual circles in France, the very basis for discussion - minimal respect for facts and logic - has been virtually abandoned.

The Ottoman Empire was an ugly affair, but they had the right idea. The rulers in Turkey were fortunately so corrupt that they left people alone pretty much - were mostly interested in robbing them - and they left them alone to run their own affairs, and their own regions and their own communities with a lot of local self determination.

Where the state lacks means of coercion, it is important to control what people think.

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production, and the wage-slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.

Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.

It is the fundamental duty of the citizen to resist and to restrain the violence of the state.

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

It is highly advantageous for the business world to foster hatred for pointy-headed government bureaucrats and to drive out of people's minds the subversive idea that the government might become an instrument of popular will, a government of, by and for the people.

Libertarian socialism is properly to be regarded as the inheritor of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment.

Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control.

Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a "war against terrorism."

If the United States was conquered by the Russians, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Elliott Abrams and the rest of them would probably be working for the invaders, sending people off to concentration camps. They're the right personality types.

One who pays some attention to history will not be surprised if those who cry most loudly that we must smash and destroy are later found among the administrators of some new system of repression.

The sign of a truly totalitarian culture is that important truths simply lack cognitive meaning.

States are violent to the extent that they have the power to act in the interests of those with domestic power.

Naturally, any conqueror is going to play one group against another.

That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.

Cuba has probably been the target of more international terrorism than the rest of the world combined and, therefore, in the American ideological system it is regarded as the source of international terrorism, exactly as Orwell would have predicted.

The point of public relations slogans like "Support Our Troops" is that they don't mean anything.

Unfortunately, you can't vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place.

There are differences in the parties - I don't think they're great differences, but they're real, and small differences in a system of great power can have enormous consequences.

Anarchism means all sort of things to different people, but the traditional anarchists' movements assumed that there'd be a highly organized society, just one organized from below with direct participation and so on.

With the development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system of injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order.

A corporate elite of managers and owners governs the economy and the political system.

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