Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomskyis an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy, and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He has spent more than half a century at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is Institute Professor Emeritus, and is the author of over 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTeacher
Date of Birth7 December 1928
CityPhiladelphia, PA
CountryUnited States of America
The threat is that the public will know what the government is up to. Any system of power is going to want to keep free from public surveillance, that's natural. Its shouldn't be but, its very natural.
The U.N. charter bars the threat of force.
In Egypt, on the eve of Tahrir Square, there was a major poll which found that overwhelmingly - 80-90%, numbers like that - Egyptians regarded the main threats they face as the U.S. and Israel. They don't like Iran - Arabs generally don't like Iran - but they didn't consider it a threat.
The United States is afraid of China; it is not a military threat to anyone and is the least aggressive of all the major military powers.
Silicon Valley wouldn't exist without massive government spending and in fact initiative.
The printing press had a very liberatory effect that meant individuals - small groups could produce radical pamphlets - could use it for organizing.
I once did a three-hour interview with Radio Oxford only to be told the microphone hadn't picked me up.
Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.
After the ignominious collapse of the Copenhagen global climate change summit in 2009, Bolivia organised a People's Summit with 35,000 participants from 140 countries - not just representatives of governments, but also civil society and activists.
Very commonly I get queries. Somebody saw something of mine on YouTube and of course if there is a talk on YouTube, there aren't any footnotes - and they want to know why did you say this. Well if they bothered to look up something in print, they would've seen why I said that. If they ask for evidence, I just say well take a look and mention something they can read and that usually ends the conversation.
Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily, and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on the society.
In November 2007, the White House issued a Declaration of Principles demanding that U.S. forces must remain indefinitely in Iraq and committing Iraq to privilege American investors.
One of the benefits of a properly functioning democracy is minority rights and majority rule.
[James] Madison pointed out in the discussion of the constitutional debates - the constitutional convention - that democracy would be a danger. He used England of course as the model and said suppose that in England everyone had the free right to vote; the poor, the propertyless - who are the great majority - would use their voting power to take away the rights of property owners to carry out what we would call land reform.