Noam Chomsky

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and terrorists, the more you control all the people.

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

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

If you're teaching a class, and you're interested in the subject, you'll be able to communicate it to the students. I've known students who've been inspired by people who were just talking about their research, not trying to be great teachers.

The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control — 'indoctrination,' we might say — exercised through the mass media.

It is not a matter of 'speaking truth to power.' It is a matter of speaking truth to the people.

Either you believe in the rule of law, or you don't.

One of the ways that the powerful maintain their power is by making you feel like you're alone.

The whole educational system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think too much, and who are too creative, and who don't follow instructions.

The very notion of 'national interest' is a highly ideological construct.

If the population is to be controlled, it has to be controlled by fear.

The more you read, the more you realize that the world is a much more complex place than you thought.

The point is that we should be trying to create a world in which we don't have to choose between bad and worse.

You can't have a functioning democracy if people don't have access to information.

If you want to understand something, you have to look at the power relations.

The purpose of education is to enable people to think for themselves.

The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people who are different, but by people who are the same.

The state is an instrument of violence in the hands of the ruling class.

The intellectual's role is to speak the truth and to expose lies.

The world is not a dangerous place because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.