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On Language QUOTES

On Language QUOTES

1 " Compare mathematics and the political sciences—it’s quite striking. In mathematics, in physics, people are concerned with what you say, not with your certification. But in order to speak about social reality, you must have the proper credentials, particularly if you depart from the accepted framework of thinking. Generally speaking, it seems fair to say that the richer the intellectual substance of a field, the less there is a concern for credentials, and the greater is the concern for content. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

2 " A consistent materialist would consider it as self-evident that the mind has very important innate structures, physically realized in some manner. Why should it be otherwise? "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

3 " No doubt a propaganda system is more effective when its doctrines are insinuated rather than asserted, when it sets the bounds for possible thought rather than simply imposing a clear and easily identifiable doctrine that one must parrot—or suffer the consequences. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

4 " In a capitalist society the mass media are capitalist institutions. The fact that these institutions reflect the ideology of dominant economic interests is hardly surprising. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

5 " With a little industry and application, anyone who is willing to extricate himself from the system of shared ideology and propaganda will readily see through the modes of distortion developed by substantial segments of the intelligentsia. Everybody is capable of doing that. If such analysis is often carried out poorly, that is because, quite commonly, social and political analysis is produced to defend special interests rather than to account for the actual events. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

6 " The basic function of the FBI is not to stop crime. Rather, it functions as a political police, in large measure. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

7 " The imperialist ideology, you say, can readily tolerate a quite large number of contradictions, infractions, and criticisms—all these remain acceptable, except one: to reveal the economic motives. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

8 " I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system. State censorship is not necessary, or even very efficient, in comparison to the ideological controls exercised by systems that are more complex and more decentralized. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

9 " A few months later, in December 1969, the Chicago police conducted a pre-dawn raid on a Panther apartment. Approximately one hundred shots were fired. At first the police claimed that they had responded to the fire of the Panthers, but it was quickly established by the local press that this was false. Fred Hampton, one of the most talented and promising leaders of the Panthers, was killed in his bed. There is evidence that he may have been drugged. Witnesses claim that he was murdered in cold blood. Mark Clark was also killed. This event can fairly be described as a Gestapo-style political assassination. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

10 " Because you cannot study the acquisition or use of language in an intelligent manner without having some idea about this language which is acquired or utilized. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

11 " Hence the elaborate pretense that the press is a critical dissenting force—maybe even too critical for the health of democracy—when in fact it is almost entirely subservient to the basic principles of the ideological system: "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

12 " The alleged complexity, depth, and obscurity of these questions is part of the illusion propagated by the system of ideological control, which aims to make the issues seem remote from the general population and to persuade them of their incapacity to organize their own affairs or to understand the social world in which they live without the tutelage of intermediaries. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

13 " The alleged complexity, depth, and obscurity of these questions is part of the illusion propagated by the system of ideological control, which aims to make the issues seem remote from the general population and to persuade them of their incapacity to organize their own affairs or to understand the social world in which they live without the tutelage of intermediaries. For that reason alone one should be careful not to link the analysis of social issues with scientific topics which, for their part, do require special training and techniques, and thus a special intellectual frame of reference, before they can be seriously investigated. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

14 " all sorts of considerations determine the truth conditions of a statement, and these go well beyond the scope of grammar. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

15 " For example, the difference between Pierre believes he is intelligent and He believes Pierre is intelligent is due to what are called relations of “command”: co-reference is impossible if the pronoun is located “higher” in the phrase structure than its nonpronominal antecedent. Now in the second case Pierre is found in a subordinated position, thus “lower” than he, so that they cannot be co-referential in the relevant sense. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

16 " Moynihan, when he was ambassador to the United Nations, produced the same effect when he attacked the Third World. These attacks aroused great admiration here; for example, when he denounced Idi Amin of Uganda as a "racist murderer." The question is not whether Idi Amin is a racist murderer. No doubt the appellation is correct. The question is, what does it mean for Moynihan to make this accusation and for others to applaud his honesty and courage in doing so? Who is Moynihan? He served in four administrations, those of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford - that is to say, administrations that were guilty of racist murder on a scale undreamed of by Idi Amin. Imagine that some minor functionary of the Third Reich had correctly accused someone of being a racist murderer. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

17 " 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. One of the devices used to achieve this narrowness of perspective is the reliance on professional credentials. The universities and academic disciplines have, in the past, been successful in safeguarding conformist attitudes and interpretations, so that by and large a reliance on “professional expertise” will ensure that views and analyses that depart from orthodoxy will rarely be expressed. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

18 " The liberal press cannot question the basic doctrine of the state religion, that the United States is benevolent, even though often misguided in its innocence, that it labors to permit free choice, even though at times some mistakes are committed in the exuberance of its programs of international goodwill. We must believe that we "Americans" are always good, though, to be sure, fallible. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

19 " have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system. State censorship is not necessary, or even very efficient, in comparison to the ideological controls exercised by systems that are more complex and more decentralized. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language

20 " But much more to my taste, at least, are quite different tendencies, for example, that range of opinion that extends roughly from Rosa Luxemburg and the Dutch Marxist Anton Pannekoek and Paul Mattick to the anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker and others. "

― Noam Chomsky , On Language