"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations
"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy
I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike
"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, historian, political critic, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. In addition to his work in linguistics, he has written on war, politics, and mass media, and is the author of over 100 books. According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall. He has been described as a prominent cultural figure, and he was voted the "world's top public intellectual" in a 2005 poll.
Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem.
After the publication of his first books on linguistics, Chomsky became a prominent critic of the Vietnam War, and since then has continued to publish books of political criticism. He has become well known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy, state capitalism and the mainstream news media. His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media. He describes his views as "fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism", and often identifies with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.
Noam Chomsky - Quotes
Dec 7, 2016 | Moonlight Sonata
Noam Chomsky Quotes About Capitalism
Jun 11, 2020
A Voice in the Wilderness
by R.E. Slater
Noam Chomsky,
whom no one knew
or listened to, spoke up
for the little guy
against all the
big guys who
were listening. A
philosopher-linguist
and poet of life,
stood before the world
as life's many unwanted
heroes have done.
Whose hands and feet,
voice and passions,
spoke up and would not
be quiet. Noam showed
care and distress for this
world's many societees
when many showed none
at all. His virtue lay in
his disquiet to inequity
and harm like a slow
burning fire - deadly,
if let out. An academic
and scholar, Noam
Chomsky's light
will ever burn on.
R.E. Slater
September 21, 2020
Noam Chomsky Quotes
''Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists.''
- Noam Chomsky (b. 1928), U.S. linguist, political analyst. For Reasons of State, introduction (1973).
''The basic idea which runs right through modern history and modern [neo]liberalism is that the public has got to be marginalized. The general public are viewed as no more than ignorant and meddlesome outsiders, a bewildered herd.''
- Noam Chomsky (b. 1928), U.S. linguist, political analyst. Interview in The Guardian (London, November 23, 1992).
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''The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.''
- Noam Chomsky (b. 1928), U.S. linguist, political analyst. repr. In For Reasons of State (1973). "Language and Freedom," (1970). lecture, delivered Jan. 1970, at Loyola University, Chicago.
''Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid-twentieth century.''
- Noam Chomsky (b. 1928), U.S. linguist, political analyst. lecture, delivered Jan. 1970, at Loyola University, Chicago. "Language and Freedom," published in For Reasons of State (1973).
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''Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.''
- Noam Chomsky (b. 1928), U.S. mathematical linguist, philosopher, psychologist, political critic. Language and Mind, p. 66 (1968). A part of the author's "Cartesian" theory that human language capacity is innate.
''I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.''
- Noam Chomsky (b. 1928), U.S. linguist, political analyst, and Mitsou Ronat. Language and Responsibility, pt. 1, ch. 1 (1979).
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''The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control—"indoctrination" we might say—exercised through the mass media.''
- Noam Chomsky (b. 1928), U.S. linguist, political analyst. "Politics," Language and Responsibility (1979).
"The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.''
- Noam Chomsky (b. 1928), U.S. linguist, political analyst. Reflections on Language, ch. 3 (1976). Chomsky was arguing against the theory of determinism in psychology.
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''Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.''
- Noam Chomsky (b. 1928), U.S. linguist, political analyst. repr. In American Power and the New Mandarins (1969). "Supplement to On Resistance," New York Review of Books (February 1, 1968).
''From now on I will consider a language to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements. All natural languages in their spoken or written form are languages in this sense.''
- Noam Chomsky (b. 1928), U.S. linguist, philosopher. Syntactic Structures, p. 13, Mouton (1971).
* * * * * * * * *
Noam Chomsky: Decades of "the Neoliberal Plague" Left
World-renowned scholar and activist Noam Chomsky said humans are living through the darkest and most consequential time in history.
Speaking on Hill.TV, Chomsky said the current age is a “point of confluence of severe crises,” including the threat of nuclear war, climate change, a raging pandemic, economic depression and racial unrest in the United States.
“This is a unique moment in human history, not just my lifetime,” he said. “There’s never been a moment in human history where such a confluence of crises emerged and decisions about them have to be made very soon — they cannot be delayed.”
A longtime antiwar activist, Chomsky criticized President Trump for “systematically dismantling the protections offered some defense against nuclear war.”
“Leading experts like William Perry, former Secretary of Defense — a person not given to exaggeration, very conservative, very informed about these issues — argues that the threat is now greater than during the Cold War,” Chomsky said.
Perry made such an argument in an op-ed in The Hill in 2017.
Chomsky said the decisions governments make in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic will be consequential in the short term, but their decisions on climate change will be even more lasting.
“We will emerge somehow from the pandemic at terrible cost, mostly needless cause,” he said. “We will not emerge from the melting of the polar ice sheets — that’s permanent.”
“There were few decades left in which we could make a decision as to whether organized human life will survive on earth, or will succumb to the threat of environmental disaster,” Chomsky added.
