More Quotes by Noam Chomsky
Governments will use whatever technology is available to combat their primary enemy - their own population.
Democratic societies can't force people. Therefore they have to control what they think.
The press is owned by wealthy men who only want certain things to reach the public.
The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another.
The indoctrination is so deep that educated people think they’re being objective.
Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.
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.
It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions - you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism.
If you are working 50 hours a week in a factory, you don't have time to read 10 newspapers a day and go back to declassified government archives. But such people may have far-reaching insights into the way the world works.
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.
