Noam Chomsky Quotes About Opinions

• 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.

  Noam Chomsky

  Smart, Thinking, Views

  Noam Chomsky (2013). “How the World Works”, p.234, Soft Skull Press

• 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.

  Noam Chomsky

  Smart, Passivity Is, People

  Noam Chomsky (2013). “How the World Works”, p.234, Soft Skull Press

• It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them.

  Noam Chomsky

  Children, Real, Ignorance

  "The World After September 11th". Noam Chomsky's speech at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Conference at Tufts University, Massachusetts, December 8, 2001.

• Anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion, is a doctrinal system which, if ever implemented, would lead to forms of tyranny and oppression that have few counterparts in human history. There isn't the slightest possibility that its (in my view, horrendous) ideas would be implemented, because they would quickly destroy any society that made this colossal error. The idea of 'free contract' between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else.

  Noam Chomsky

  Errors, Views, Ideas

  "On Anarchism". Interview with Tom Lane, chomsky.info. December 23, 1996.

• Public opinion can be influential, the media can be influential.

  Noam Chomsky

  Media, Public Opinion, Opinion

• You don't have any other society where the educated classes are so effectively indoctrinated and controlled by a subtle propaganda system - a private system including media, intellectual opinion forming magazines and the participation of the most highly educated sections of the population. Such people ought to be referred to as "Commissars - for that is what their essential function is - to set up and maintain a system of doctrines and beliefs which will undermine independent thought and prevent a proper understanding and analysis of national and global institutions, issues, and policies".

  Noam Chomsky

  Truth, Independent, Issues

  "Language and Politics". Book by Noam Chomsky, 1988.

• French intellectual life has, in my opinion, been turned into something cheap and meretricious by the 'star' system. It is like Hollywood. Thus we go from one absurdity to another - Stalinism, existentialism. Lacan, Derrida - some of them obscene ( Stalinism), some simply infantile and ridiculous ( Lacan, Derrida). What is striking, however, is the pomposity and self-importance, at each stage.

  Noam Chomsky

  Stars, Self, Intellectual

  Noam Chomsky, Jean Bricmont, Julie Franck (2010). “Chomsky Notebook”, p.72, Columbia University Press

• There is no reason to believe ... that the "essential purpose" of language is "communication". Language can be used to transmit information, but it also serves many other purposes: to establish relations among people, to express or clarify thought, for play, for creative mental activity, to gain understanding, and so on. In my opinion, there is no reason to accord privileged status to one or the other of these modes.

  Noam Chomsky

  Believe, Communication, Play

  "Language and Responsibility". Book by Noam Chomsky, chomsky.info. 1977.

• The process of shaping opinion, attitudes, and perceptions was termed the 'engineering of consent' by one of the founders of the modern public relations industry, Edward Bernays.

  Noam Chomsky

  Attitude, Engineering, Perception

  Noam Chomsky (2016). “Who Rules the World?”, p.83, Metropolitan Books

• Everyone engaged in research must have had the experience of working with feverish and prolonged intensity to write a paper which no one else will read or to solve a problem which no one else thinks important and which will bring no conceivable reward - which may only confirm a general opinion that the researcher is wasting his time on irrelevancies.

  Noam Chomsky

  Writing, Thinking, Important

  Noam Chomsky (2013). “The Essential Chomsky”, p.24, The New Press

• But, that’s the whole point of corporatization - to try to remove the public from making decisions over their own fate, to limit the public arena, to control opinion, to make sure that the fundamental decisions that determine how the world is going to be run - which includes production, commerce, distribution, thought, social policy, foreign policy, everything - are not in the hands of the public, but rather in the hands of highly concentrated private power. In effect, tyranny unaccountable to the public.

  Noam Chomsky

  Running, Fate, Hands

  "On Microsoft and Corporate Control of the Internet". Interview with Anna Couey, chomsky.info. May 6, 1998.

• Popular struggles to bring about a freer and more just society have been resisted by violence and repression, and massive efforts to control opinion and attitudes. Over time, however, they have met with considerable success, even though there is a long way to go, and there is often regression.

  Noam Chomsky

  Attitude, Struggle, Long

  Noam Chomsky (2016). “Who Rules the World?”, p.85, Metropolitan Books

• Take a look at public opinion. About 70 percent of the population, in the polls, said the [Vietnam ] war was fundamentally wrong and immoral, not a mistake. And that attitude lasted as long as polls were taken in the early '80s.

  Noam Chomsky

  Attitude, War, Mistake

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Right after 9-11, as far as I know, one newspaper in the United States had the integrity to investigate opinion in the Muslim world: the 'Wall Street Journal.'

  Noam Chomsky

  Wall, Integrity, United States

  "Civilization versus Barbarism?". Interview with M. Junaid Alam, chomsky.info. December 17, 2004.

• There's kind of a hidden point which isn't being brought out, and that is that it is inconceivable that the U.S. would permit democracy in the Middle East, and for a very simple reason. Just take a look at polls of Arab public opinion. They exist. You can't find them in the press, but they exist from prestigious polling agencies. Released by major institutions. And what they show is that if there was democracy in the Middle East, the entire U.S. program for domination of the Middle East would be down the tube.

  Noam Chomsky

  Simple, Agency, Democracy

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

• Public opinion in Egypt is very antagonistic to the way the dictatorship, Mubarak dictatorship, interpreted relations with Israel. Very antagonistic.

  Noam Chomsky

  Israel, Egypt, Public Opinion

• Arab public opinion does not regard Iran as a hostile entity. In fact it's so supportive of Iran that a majority would think the place would be better off if Iran had nuclear weapons. The main enemies are the United States and Isreal, in the 80, 90 percent range.

  Noam Chomsky

  Thinking, Iran, Enemy

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

• There's a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.

  Noam Chomsky

  Public Opinion, Gaps, Policy

• Looking at polls of Arab public opinion, you look at popular figures, the most popular figure is the prime minister of Turkey, Erdogan, and then it goes down the list. You get Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, you don't get Obama, or in fact any western leader. The public doesn't want the whole imperial project. So if you had democracy, it would be all over.

  Noam Chomsky

  Turkeys, Leader, Democracy

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

• When I look at public opinion, I'm not far out of the mainstream. I'm in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I've ever said.

  Noam Chomsky

  Public Opinion, Looks, Mainstream

• There are by now declassified documents from the 1950s that tells you a lot about what's going on in Egypt and we should have known it then. It's about exactly what's happening, how we can disregard public opinion as long as the dictators we support are capable of suppressing their populations. So to hell with public opinion. That's all right there in the 1950's. That's not security. That's not security of the government. That's, if anything, security from its own population. And there's a lot of that.

  Noam Chomsky

  Egypt, Should Have, Government

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

• There's an interesting question, whether the anarchists had alternatives [in Spain]. If they did tend to support the government that had been destroyed, what were the alternatives? There was actually a proposal by Camillo Berneri, an Italian anarchist who was in Spain at the time, which is not a crazy notion in my opinion. He opposed participation in government and was against the formation of an army, meaning a major army to fight [Francisco] Franco.

  Noam Chomsky

  Crazy, Fighting, Army

  Source: thehumanist.com

• As the capacity to coerce declines, it is natural to turn to control of opinion as the basis for authority and domination - a fundamental principle of government already emphasized by David Hume.

  Noam Chomsky

  Government, Principles, Fundamentals

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

• In fact, it's pretty dramatic when you get to 1975, very revealing, the [Vietnam] war ends. Everybody had to write something about the war, what it meant. You also had polls of public opinion, and they're dramatically different.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Writing, Public Opinion

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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