{"author":"Noam Chomsky","author_id":"Noam+Chomsky","total_quotes":168,"quotes":[{"text":"Debt is a trap, especially student debt, which is enormous, far larger than credit card debt. It's a trap for the rest of your life because the laws are designed so that you can't get out of it. If a business, say, gets in too much debt, it can declare bankruptcy, but individuals can almost never be relieved of student debt through bankruptcy.","author":"Noam Chomsky","tags":["life","student","you "],"id":3214,"author_id":"Noam+Chomsky"},{"text":"These ideas grew out of the Enlightenment; their roots are in Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality, Humboldt’s Limits of State Action, Kant’s insistence, in his defense of the French Revolution, that freedom is the precondition for acquiring the maturity for freedom, not a gift to be granted when such maturity is achieved. With the development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system of injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order. In fact, on the very same assumptions that led classical liberalism to oppose the intervention of the state in social life, capitalist social relations are also intolerable.","author":"Noam Chomsky","tags":["anarchism","classical-liberalism","enlightenment","socialism"],"id":7059,"author_id":"Noam+Chomsky"},{"text":"Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history.","author":"Noam Chomsky","tags":["history","power","war "],"id":8036,"author_id":"Noam+Chomsky"},{"text":"I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.","author":"Noam Chomsky","tags":["philosophy"],"id":8864,"author_id":"Noam+Chomsky"},{"text":"It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.","author":"Noam Chomsky","tags":["advertising","marketing","media-of-the-united-states","politician","politics-of-the-united-states"],"id":10690,"author_id":"Noam+Chomsky"},{"text":"You aren't supposed to learn that dedicated, committed effort can bring about significant changes of consciousness and understanding. That's a very dangerous idea, and therefore it's been wiped out of history.","author":"Noam Chomsky","tags":["change"],"id":13023,"author_id":"Noam+Chomsky"},{"text":"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.","author":"Noam Chomsky","tags":["economics","media","politics","society","sociology"],"id":15883,"author_id":"Noam+Chomsky"},{"text":"That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.","author":"Noam Chomsky","tags":["anarchism","anarchy","ity","politics"],"id":19615,"author_id":"Noam+Chomsky"},{"text":"Modern industrial civilisation has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilisation has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits in the classic formulation.Now, it's long been understood very well that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist with whatever suffering and injustice it entails as long as it's possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited: that the World is an infinite resource, and that the World is an infinite garbage-can. At this stage of History, either one of two things is possible: either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community-interests, guided by values of solidarity and sympathy and concern for others; or, alternatively, there will be no destiny for anyone to control.As long as some specialised class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves. But the conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole and, by now, that means the Global Community. The question is whether privileged élites should dominate mass-communication, and should use this power as they tell us they must, namely, to impose necessary illusions, manipulate and deceive the stupid majority, and remove them from the public arena. The question, in brief, is whether Democracy and Freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly-terminal phase of human existence, Democracy and Freedom are more than values to be treasured, they may well be essential to survival.","author":"Noam Chomsky","tags":["activism","anarchism","ity","brainwashing","chomsky"],"id":22240,"author_id":"Noam+Chomsky"},{"text":"Peace is preferable to war. But it’s not an absolute value, and so we always ask, “What kind of peace?","author":"Noam Chomsky","tags":["peace","war"],"id":24016,"author_id":"Noam+Chomsky"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":168,"pages":17,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}