Noam Chomsky

"It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies." Noam Chomsky

"If something is repeated over and over as obvious, the chances are that it is obviously false." Noam Chomsky

"It takes one minute to tell a lie, and an hour to refute it." Noam Chomsky

"The conception of democracy is the one that I mentioned. The bewildered herd is a problem. We've got to prevent their roar and trampling. We've got to distract them. They should be watching the Superbowl or sitcoms or violent movies. Every once in a while you call on them to chant meaningless slogans like "Support our troops." You've got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they're properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going to destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous, because they're not competent to think. Therefore it's important to distract them and marginalize them." Noam Chomsky

"I think there is a good reason why the propaganda system works that way. It recognizes that the public will not support the actual policies. Therefore it is important to prevent any knowledge or understanding of them." Noam Chomsky

"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." Noam Chomsky

"The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know." Noam Chomsky

"It’s about what you would expect from a bipartisan democracy campaign — it’s an attempt to impose what is called democracy, meaning rule by the rich and the powerful, without interference by the mob but within the framework of formal electoral procedures." Noam Chomsky

"Citizens of the democratic societies should undertake a course of intellectual self defense to protect themselves from manipulation and control, and to lay the basis for meaningful democracy." Noam Chomsky

"It's dangerous when people are willing to give up their privacy." Noam Chomsky

"Governments should not have this capacity. But governments will use whatever technology is available to them to combat their primary enemy – which is their own population" Noam Chomsky

"Most schooling is training for stupidity and conformity, and that's institutional, but occasionally you get a spark, somebody'll challenge your mind, make you think and so on, and that has a tremendous effect you just reach all sorts of people. Of course if you do it you may very have problems, you have to tread the narrow line. There are plenty of people who don't want students to think, they're afraid of the crisis of democracy. If people start thinking you get all these problems that I quoted before. They won't have enough humility to submit to a civil rule or they'll start trying to press their demands in the political arena and have ideas of their own, instead of beleiving what they're told. And privelage and power typically doesn't want that and so they react and the high school teacher that tries to get students to think may find oppression, firing and so on." Noam Chomsky

"The greatest progress is in the sciences that study the simplest systems. So take, say, physics - greatest progress there. But one of the reasons is that the physicists have an advantage that no other branch of sciences has. If something gets too complicated, they hand it to someone else." Noam Chomsky

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