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Reason Quotes by Noam Chomsky

65 Reason quotes by Noam Chomsky

All Reason quotes Noam Chomsky’s page

Going back to why people don't vote, I presume the main reason is because they understand it won't change anything. Chomsky points out that many political actions hide their true reasons, and that the public often lacks the information to see them. He also notes that academic fights become fierce when little is at stake.

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I agree with Bill Clinton that US forces should not be sent to Haiti, but not for his reasons.

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There's a good reason why nobody studies history, it just teaches you too much.

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When I was ten years old I wanted to be a taxidermist for some reason, don't ask me why.

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Whatever the reasons may be, I was very much affected by events of the 1930s - the Spanish Civil War, for example,…

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Now financial liberalization is just a catastrophe waiting to happen, and there are very well understood reasons for that.

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The reason I am a political radical is that I work on syntax. If I worked on semantics (which in fact I…

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As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

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The reason academic disputes are so vicious is that so little is at stake.

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In fact, when drugs are legalized, use sometimes goes down, it's been claimed. Part of the reason is that teenage kids use…

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It's a class war, and a war on young people too... that's why tuition is rising so rapidly. There's no real economic…

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It's a principle that anything our leaders do is for noble reasons. It may be mistaken, it may be ugly, but basically…

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Going back to why people don't vote, I presume the main reason is because they understand without reading political science texts that…

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The prescription for endless war poses a far greater danger to Americans than perceived enemies do, for reasons the terrorist organisations understand…

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In the case of [Antonio] Gramsci, the Fascist government agreed that he was a "model intellectual" in [Edward] Said's sense, and for…

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I mean the reason the sit-down strikes struck such fear in the hearts of management was that they knew that a sit-down…

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There is good reason to believe that we have already entered the Sixth Extinction, a period of destruction of species on a…

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Extensive violations of human rights (torture, forced reduction of living standards for much of the population, police-sponsored death squads, destruction of representative…

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If there are dollars to be made, you destroy the environment. The reason is elementary. The people who are going to be…

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And if you look at all this academic work in the conferences and so on there's a constant theme that terrorism is…

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CEOs pretty much pick the boards that give them salaries and bonuses. That's one of the reasons why the CEO-to-payment [ratio] has…

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There is a reason why Nelson Mandela went to Cuba to praise Castro and thank the Cuban people almost as soon as…

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From 1962 to 1965 the US was dedicated to try to prevent the independence of South Vietnam, the reason was of course…

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I don't see how one can "believe in organized religion." What does it mean to believe in an organization? One can join…

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Do I believe in God? Can't answer, I'm afraid. I'm not being flippant, but I don't understand the question. What is it…

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We can imagine a society in which no one could survive as a social being because it does not correspond to biologically…

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Anton Pannekoek didn't encourage radical workers and other activists of the anti-Bolshevik left to see revolutionary potential in his work in astronomy,…

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A corporation is a state created institution, state supported institution, its concentration of private power, there is no reason why it should…

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Personally, I am uneasy about the notion of "a politically engaged university," for reasons I wrote about over 30 years ago, at…

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NATO was constructed on the - with the reason, whether one believes it or not, that it was going to defend Western…

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[Isaiah] Berlin's observation is accurate enough, and applies at home as well, and even more harshly for the reasons already mentioned: the…

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There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by…

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There happen to be a lot of people around who spent an hour on the Internet and think they know a lot…

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There's an interesting book by the former Brazilian ambassador Celso Amorim. In 2010, he initiated an effort along with Turkey to settle…

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We don't have polls from the business world, but it's pretty clear that the energy corporations in America would be quite happy…

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That was the reason why very few people fleeing the rise of fascism in Europe, especially in Germany, could get to the…

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Many of the people who voted for Trump were people who voted for Obama eight years ago. You remember, of course, his…

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Student debt is structured to be a burden for life. The indebted cannot declare bankruptcy, unlike Donald Trump. Current student debt is…

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Why did the people think [Vietnam war] was fundamentally wrong and immoral? The guys who ran the polls, John E. Rielly, a…

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There is no reason to believe ... that the "essential purpose" of language is "communication". ... Language can be used to transmit…

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There is no evolutionary pressure to create minds capable of forming sciences; it just happened. Evolutionary pressure has not led to higher…

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More by Noam Chomsky

The costs of the Bush-Obama wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now estimated to run as high as $4.4 trillion - a major victory…

If you believe in democracy, why shouldn't you know what the government is doing?

It’s a shameful moment for U.S. media when it insists on being subservient to the grotesque propaganda agencies of a violent, aggressive state.

There are questions as to whether it should even exist. Who should corporations be responsive to, the management of a corporation? Theoretically they are…

Governments regard their own citizens as their main enemy, and they have to be - protect themselves. That's why you have state secret laws.…

I don't join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn't have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying…

The first thing you ought to do is verify what I present. Just because I say it doesn't make it true. So check it…

I wrote an article about the marine landing [in Haiti] right away, but barely mentioned the oil, because my article would come out two…

American society is now remarkably atomized. Political organizations have collapsed. In fact, it seems like even bowling leagues are collapsing. The left has a…

Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things. Noam Chomsky

There's an interesting book about that called The Third Reich and the Ivory Tower, written by Stephen H. Norwood. It has a long discussion…

This is class war on an international scale, and power is in the hands of those who control the international economic system.

There are big, extremely irrational parts of the society, and they have now been mobilized politically by the Republican establishment, hoping that these people…

There's plenty to criticize about the mass media, but they are the source of regular information about a wide range of topics. You can't…

The 50,000 Korean mercenaries we had in Vietnam were professional killers and just massacred people outright. And the American army did plenty of that…