Noam Chomsky Quotes About Challenges

• As soon as one identifies, challenges and overcomes illegitimate power, he or she is an anarchist. Most people are anarchists. What they call themselves doesn’t matter to me. The world is full of suffering, distress, violence and catastrophes. Students must decide: does something concern you or not? I say: look around, analyze the problems, ask yourself what you can do and set out on the work!

  Noam Chomsky

  People, Challenges, Suffering

  "Students should become anarchists". ZEIT Campus Interview translated by IndyBay, www.indybay.org. June 14, 2011.

• I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.

  Noam Chomsky

  Thinking, Challenges, Hierarchy

  Noam Chomsky (2004). “Language and Politics”, p.775, AK Press

• Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.

  Noam Chomsky

  Teacher, School, Opportunity

  Noam Chomsky (2010). “The Chomsky Reader”, p.149, Pantheon

• I don't bother writing about Fox News. It is too easy. What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, the ones who portray themselves and perceive themselves as challenging power, as courageous, as standing up for truth and justice. They are basically the guardians of the faith. They set the limits. They tell us how far we can go. They say, 'Look how courageous I am.' But do not go one millimeter beyond that. At least for the educated sectors, they are the most dangerous in supporting power.

  Noam Chomsky

  Writing, Justice, Challenges

  Institute Professor Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky, John Junkerman, Takei Masakazu (2015). “Power and Terror: Conflict, Hegemony, and the Rule of Force”, p.4, Routledge

• If you are giving a graduate course you don't try to impress the students with oratory, you try to challenge them, get them to question you.

  Noam Chomsky

  Giving, Challenges, Trying

• It is only natural to expect that guilds will tend to "protect their turf" and to resist challenge.

  Noam Chomsky

  Challenges, Natural, Protect

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

• The tendencies are considerably weaker in the natural sciences, which, for the past several centuries, have survived and flourished through such constant challenge, and therefore, at best, seek to encourage it. Serving the status quo in political and socioeconomic realms is a different matter.

  Noam Chomsky

  Past, Political, Challenges

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

• Insofar as the universities are free and independent, they will also be "subversive," in the sense that dominant structures of power and their ideological support will be subjected to challenge and critique, a counterpart to attitudes that are fostered in the hard sciences wherever they are taken seriously.

  Noam Chomsky

  Attitude, Taken, Independent

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

• No one seriously doubts that if Piraha children are brought up in Boston they'll be speaking Boston English, that is, that the capacities are present, unlike other animals, as far as is known. There's no challenge to the theory - not mine, but everyone's - that the human language faculty provides the means for generation of an infinite array of structured expressions.

  Noam Chomsky

  Children, Mean, Animal

  Source: libcom.org

• Modifying the core institutions of the society is no small challenge.

  Noam Chomsky

  Challenges, Institutions, Modifying

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• You know, we have little bits of understanding, glimpses, a little bit of light here and there, but there's a tremendous amount of darkness, which is a challenge. I think life would be pretty boring if we understood everything. It's better if we don't understand anything and know that we don't, that's the important part.

  Noam Chomsky

  Thinking, Light, Challenges

  Interview in Cardiff, Wales, UK, March 11, 2011.

• Independence of mind, enthusiasm, dedication to the field, and willingness to challenge and question and to explore new direction. There are plenty of people like that, but schools tend to discourage those characteristics.

  Noam Chomsky

  School, Dedication, People

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