31 Noam Chomsky Quotes: Quotes on Freedom, language and society

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and also known as the father of modern linguistics.

Chomsky gained a worldwide following as a political dissident for his analysis of the detrimental effect of economic elites on American domestic politics, foreign policy, and intellectual culture.

Chomsky played a key role in remodeling the study of language. He developed transformational grammar theory, the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program.

He is the author of more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media.

Here are some motivational quotes by Noam Chomsky on various topics such as freedom of speech, education, language, and society.

Best Noam Chomsky Quotes

1. “See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence.” ― Noam Chomsky

2. “If you’re teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.” ― Noam Chomsky

3. “Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.” ― Noam Chomsky

4. “The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organization, and participation in a meaningful society.” ― Noam Chomsky

5. “We shouldn’t be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.” ― Noam Chomsky

6. “Don’t be obsessed with tactics but with purpose. Tactics have a half-life.” ― Noam Chomsky

7. “I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.” ― Noam Chomsky

8. “Religion is based on the idea that God is an imbecile.” ― Noam Chomsky

9. “People not only don’t know what’s happening to them, but they also don’t even know that they don’t know.” ― Noam Chomsky

10. “If you want to achieve something, you build the basis for it.” ― Noam Chomsky

World Peace Quotes Noam Chomsky

11. “The world is a very puzzling place. If you’re not willing to be puzzled, you just become a replica of someone else’s mind.” ― Noam Chomsky

12. “Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.” ― Noam Chomsky

13. “Peace is preferable to war. But it’s not an absolute value, and so we always ask, “What kind of peace?” ― Noam Chomsky

14. Noam Chomsky quotes on freedom of speech

15. “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” ― Noam Chomsky

16. “If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world.” ― Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky on Society

17. “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.” ― Noam Chomsky

18. “It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.” ― Noam Chomsky

19. “The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.” ― Noam Chomsky

20. “The social system is taking on a form in which finding out what you want to do is less and less of an option because your life is too structured, organized, controlled and disciplined.” ― Noam Chomsky

21. “Social action must be animated by a vision of a future society and by explicit judgments of value concerning the character of this future society.” ― Noam Chomsky

22. “It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.” ― Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky quotes on Education

23. “The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don’t know how to be submissive, and so on — because they’re dysfunctional to the institutions.” ― Noam Chomsky

24. “Education is a system of imposed ignorance.” ― Noam Chomsky

25. “ 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

26. “Real education is about getting people involved in thinking for themselves- and that’s a tricky business to know how to do well, but clearly, it requires that whatever it is you’re looking at has to somehow catch people’s interest and make them want to think and make them want to pursue and explore.” ― Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky Quotes for a better future

27. “Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.” ― Noam Chomsky

28. “Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things.” ― Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky Quotes on Language

29. “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.” ― Chomsky, Noam

30. “Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.” ― Noam Chomsky

31. “Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analog in the animal world.” ― Noam Chomsky

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