In its foreign policies, the United States does not punish atrocities, only disobedience.

Avram Noam Chomsky
292

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Avram Noam Chomsky
274
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state. -Avram Noam Chomsky
263

The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.

Avram Noam Chomsky
244

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.

Avram Noam Chomsky
226
The country was founded on the principle that the primary role of government is to protect property from the majority, and so it remains. -Avram Noam Chomsky
211

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

Avram Noam Chomsky
202

The structure of language determines not only thought, but reality itself.

Avram Noam Chomsky
196
States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.' -Avram Noam Chomsky
183

The freedom of speech is worthless without the freedom of offensive speech. Goebbels and Himmler were for freedom of speech that was inoffensive to the state.

Avram Noam Chomsky
171

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.

Avram Noam Chomsky
157
Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune. -Avram Noam Chomsky
153

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

Avram Noam Chomsky
151

Advertising is tax deductible, so we all pay for the privilege of being manipulated and controlled.

Avram Noam Chomsky
142
Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation. -Avram Noam Chomsky
130

Experience becomes possible because of language.

Avram Noam Chomsky
118

According to the standards of the Nuremburg Trials, every American president since World War II could be convicted as a war criminal and hung.

Avram Noam Chomsky
116
All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume. -Avram Noam Chomsky
113