Language would have evolved first as an internal object, a kind of "language of thought" (LOT), with externalisation (hence communication) an ancillary… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
Take the US. Women were not even able to vote until 90 ago, at about the same time they gained the right… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
Well, they really didn't have to worry, because the way power politics works, the World Court can't do anything. Look, there's one… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
Jesus himself, and most of the message of the Gospels, is a message of service to the poor, a critique of the… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
Whenever there is injustice, oppression, aggression, violence, it's standard for it to be supported by those we now call "intellectuals," but typically… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
Nothing in these abstract economic models actually works in the real world. It doesn't matter how many footnotes they put in, or… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
There is undoubtedly much to learn about the social uses of language, for communication or for other purposes. But at present there… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
One thing that you and I know is language. Another thing that you and I know is how objects behave in perceptual… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
So take social media; take a look at the way they're used. In a lot of ways they're used constructively; lot of… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
If the principle is, "Let's not get lethal substances out to the public", the first one you'd go after is tobacco. The… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
The labor movement had been pretty much killed in the 1920s, almost destroyed. It revived in the 1930s and made a huge… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
Prophet just means intellectual. They were people giving geopolitical analysis, moral lessons, that sort of thing. We call them intellectuals today. There… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
My feeling is that a human being or any complex organism has a system of cognitive structures that develop much in the… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
An individual's refusal to carry out the criminal acts of his government sets the stage, in the most effective way possible, for… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
Chemistry, until my childhood, not that long ago, was regarded as a calculating device. Because you couldn't reduce to physics. So it's… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
Surely no rational or realistic person will discount the possibility that [during wartime] the United States might suddenly resort to nuclear weapons.… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
Suppose that insect wings developed primarily as thermoregulators and then were used for skimming and finally flying, evolving along the way. What… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
There was a free election in Palestine, but it came out the wrong way. So instantly, the United States and Israel with… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
For us, we are all very different, our languages are very different, and our societies are very different. But if we could… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
...jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you're trying to organize a mass base of… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
The United States in many ways resembles a Third World country - far more elevated, but it has many of those structural… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
Technology can also be used so that private individuals will have access to the way centralized decisions are being made. — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
In the West, you don't get in any trouble if you tell the truth, but you still can't do it. Not only… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
By a generative grammar I mean simply a system of rules that in some explicit and well-defined way assigns structural descriptions to… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
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… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
If you believe in democracy, why shouldn't you know what the government is doing? — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
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. — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
There are questions as to whether it should even exist. Who should corporations be responsive to, the management of a corporation? Theoretically they are… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
Governments regard their own citizens as their main enemy, and they have to be - protect themselves. That's why you have state secret laws.… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
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… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
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… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
I wrote an article about the marine landing [in Haiti] right away, but barely mentioned the oil, because my article would come out two… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
American society is now remarkably atomized. Political organizations have collapsed. In fact, it seems like even bowling leagues are collapsing. The left has a… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things. Noam Chomsky — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
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… — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image
This is class war on an international scale, and power is in the hands of those who control the international economic system. — Noam Chomsky Copy Share Image