Noam Chomsky Philosophical Quotes — Page 16

Linguist, Philosopher, Activist

Philosophical

“When I wrote about the Spanish Civil War many years later, I used documents that I picked up when I was a child, as a lot hadn't been published (a lot more resources are available now).”

Children Years

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Noam Chomsky

Linguist, Philosopher, Activist

Philosophical

“Our minds are specifically adapted to developing certain theories, and we have a science if the theories that are available to our minds happen to be close to true. Well, there is no particular reason to suppose that the intersection of true theories and theories that are accessible to the mind is very large. It may not be very large.”

Mind May Reason

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Philosophical

“Imagine an extrahuman observer looking at us. Such an extrahuman observer would be struck precisely by the uniformity of human languages, by the very slight variation from one language to another, and by the remarkable respects in which all languages are the same. And then he would notice we do not pay any attention to that because for the purpose of human life it is quite natural and appropriate just to take for granted everything that is common. We don't concern ourselves with that, all we worry about are differences.”

Differences Would Be Worry

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Philosophical

“Of course, everybody says they're for peace. Hitler was for peace. Everybody is for peace. The question is: What kind of peace?”

Kind Courses

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Philosophical

“Some [people] may be "servants of the power structure," but that has to be shown. I think it often can be shown, but the burden of proof is on the critic who puts forth that thesis in particular cases.”

Thinking Often Can Burden Of Proof

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Philosophical

“In the Munich agreement in late 1938 [Franklin] Roosevelt sent his chief adviser Sumner Welles, who came back with a very supportive statement saying that Hitler was someone we could really do business with and so on.”

Agreement Supportive Munich

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Philosophical

“To go back to a moment of Western civilization remote enough in time so that we should be able to look at it dispassionately, ask what happened during World War I. What was the typical behavior of respected intellectuals in Germany, England, the United States? What happened to those who publicly questioned the nobility of the war effort, on both sides? I do not think the answers are untypical.”

Thinking Civilization

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Philosophical

“With the development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system of injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order.”

Order Development Enlightenment

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Philosophical

“The great soul of power extends far beyond states, to every domain of life, from families to international affairs. And throughout, every form of authority and domination bears a severe burden of proof. It is not self-legitimizing. And when it cannot bear the burden, as is commonly the case, it should be dismantled.”

Self Soul Burden Of Proof

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Philosophical

“There's a War Crimes Act in the United States passed by a Republican Congress in 1996, which says that grave breaches of the Geneva Convention are subject to the death penalty. And that doesn't mean the soldier that committed them - that means the commanders.”

Mean Soldier

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Philosophical

“Cuba forces in Angola gave a real shot in the arm to the liberation movements, and it also was a lesson to the white South Africans that the end is coming. They can't just hope to subdue the continent on racist grounds.”

Real White Cuba

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Philosophical

“A 1998 study was done in Hebrew by an Israeli scholar, Yosef Grodzinsky, and the English translation of the title is Good Human Material. That's what they wanted sent to Palestine for colonization and for the eventual conflict that took place some years later. These policies were somewhat complementary to the U.S. policy of pressuring England to allow Jews to go to Palestine, but not allowing them here. The British politician Ernest Bevin was quite bitter about it, asking, "if you want to save the Jews, why send them to Palestine when you don't admit them?"”

Years Asking Titles

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Noam Chomsky — Philosophical Quotes

Noam Chomsky Quotes