Noam Chomsky

“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless.”

“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”

“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...”

“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”

“Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power.”

“Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.”

“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.”

“The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know.”

“Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.”

“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.”

“It's the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.”

“If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope.”

“The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.”

“That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for.”

“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.”