Noam Chomsky Quotes



You have two choices, you can say, "I'm a pessimist, nothing's going to work, I'm giving up, I'll help ensure the worst can happen". Or, you can grasp onto the opportunities that do exist, the rays of hope that exist and say, "Well, maybe we can make it a better world". It's not much of a choice.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview on UpFront with Mehdi Hasan for Al-Jazeera

Every Republican candidate is either a climate change denier or a sceptic who says you can't do anything about it. What they are saying is, "let's destroy the world", is that worth voting against? Yeah.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview on UpFront with Mehdi Hasan for Al-Jazeera

[Edward Snowden] should not just be pardoned, but honored. We should be asking whether the government should be pardoned.
― Noam Chomsky, University of Chicago lecture.

During the whole Neoliberal period, the last generation, both political parties have drifted to the right. Today's Democrats are what used to be called moderate Republicans. The Republicans have just drifted off the spectrum. They are so committed to extreme wealth and power that they cannot get votes.
― Noam Chomsky, From a lecture given by Chomsky at The New School presented by Haymarket Books and the Schools of Public Engagement

Bernie Sanders may use the word socialist but he's basically a New Dealer. Now, in the current American political spectrum, to be a New Dealer is to be way out on the left.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview on UpFront with Mehdi Hasan for Al-Jazeera

You can't educate yourself by looking things up online.
― Noam Chomsky

15 years ago [Islamic terrorism] was confined to a tiny tribal area in Afghanistan. Now it is all over the world. Every time you hit it with a sledgehammer you expand it.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview on UpFront with Mehdi Hasan for Al-Jazeera

The worst terrorist campaign in the world right now, by far, is the one that's being orchestrated in Washington. That's the global assassination campaign. There has never been a terrorist campaign at that scale.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview for Global Conversation with Isabelle Kumar

We are racing towards a precipice, which we are determined to fall over, which will sharply reduce the chances of decent survival. Well actually there are two. One is environmental catastrophe, which is imminent and we don't have a lot of time to deal with it and we're going the wrong way. The other has been around for 70 years, the threat of nuclear war.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview for Global Conversation with Isabelle Kumar

My vote would be against the republican candidate. If you abstain, that means you are giving a vote for the republican candidate.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview on UpFront with Mehdi Hasan for Al-Jazeera

Bernie Sanders is a decent honest New Dealer. I agree with him on a lot of things, not on other things... of the current candidates he's the one that, from my point of view, would have the best policies.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview on UpFront with Mehdi Hasan for Al-Jazeera

Trump is maybe comic relief but its not that different from the mainstream, which I think is more important.
― Noam Chomsky, From a lecture given by Chomsky at The New School presented by Haymarket Books and the Schools of Public Engagement

When you bomb a village in Yemen, say you kill somebody, maybe the person you were aiming at, maybe not and the other people that happen to be in the neighbourhood, how do you think people react? The say, "We're gonna take revenge".
― Noam Chomsky, Interview for Global Conversation with Isabelle Kumar

The Sanders achievement was maybe the most surprising and significant aspect of the November election. Sanders broke from a century of history of pretty much bought elections. That is a reflection of the decline of how political institutions are perceived.
― Noam Chomsky

I never anticipated living in Utopia.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview on UpFront with Mehdi Hasan for Al-Jazeera

There are differences between the parties. I don't think they are great difference but they are real and small differences in a system of great power can have enormous consequences.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview on UpFront with Mehdi Hasan for Al-Jazeera

The idea that Ukraine might join a Western military alliance would be quite unacceptable to any Russian leader.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview for Global Conversation with Isabelle Kumar

The United States is carrying out constant actions that endanger Israel, very seriously. Mainly, supporting Israeli policy. For the last 40 years the greatest threat to Israel has been its own policies.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview for Global Conversation with Isabelle Kumar

To challenge the right of investors to determine who lives, who dies, and how they live and die - that would be a significant move towards Enlightenment ideals. That would be revolutionary.
― Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian in The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many. First published in 1994 by Odonian Press.

If I was in the mainstream I'd have to ask myself what I'm doing wrong.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview on UpFront with Mehdi Hasan for Al-Jazeera

It's perfectly obvious that the Assad government is not going to enter into negotiations that are based on the condition that it commits suicide. If that is the condition they are just going to keep destroying the country. That, unfortunately, is the U.S. position.
― Noam Chomsky, From a lecture given by Chomsky at The New School presented by Haymarket Books and the Schools of Public Engagement

It [America] is a pretty exceptional country in many ways. One is it's extremely religious. It's one of the most extreme fundamentalist countries in the world.
― Noam Chomsky, From a lecture given by Chomsky at The New School presented by Haymarket Books and the Schools of Public Engagement

The idea that Ukraine might join a Western military alliance would be quite unacceptable to any Russian leader.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview for Global Conversation with Isabelle Kumar

If the master roars, the servants cower.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview for Global Conversation with Isabelle Kumar

There is a reason why, in international polls run by US polling agencies - the main ones - the United States is regarded as the greatest threat to world peace by an overwhelming margin. No other countries even close. Incidentally, its kind of interesting that US media refused to publish this.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview for Global Conversation with Isabelle Kumar

The United States and Israel [are] the two major rogue states in the world.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview for Global Conversation with Isabelle Kumar

Scientists, overwhelmingly, recognise that most of the fossil fuels have to be left in the ground if our grandchildren are going to have decent prospects. But the institutional structures of our society are pressuring to try to extract every drop.
― Noam Chomsky, Interview for Global Conversation with Isabelle Kumar

In 2007 right before the great crash, when there was euphoria about what was called the ‘great moderation’, the wonderful economy, at that point the real wages of working people were lower – literally lower – than they had been in 1979 when the neoliberal programmes began. You had a similar phenomenon in England.
― Noam Chomsky

To quotes the business press, we're creating "a new imperial age" with a "de facto world government." It has its own institutions - like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, trading structures like NAFTA and GATT (now known as the WTO), [and] executive meetings like the G-7 and the European Community bureaucracy.
― Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian in The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many. First published in 1994 by Odonian Press.

During what's been called the "Mexican economic miracle" of the last decade, their [Mexican worker's] wages have dropped 60%.
― Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian in The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many. First published in 1994 by Odonian Press.