Today, we have private airline companies, but if you take a look at a Boeing plane next time you travel, you'll see that you are basically taking a ride on a modified bomber.

— Noam Chomsky

Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.

— Noam Chomsky

[W]e have a democracy that uses free elections to put in place known obstructionists, and a media that disproportionately gives a forum to economically driven ideology over sound science.

— Noam Chomsky

Well before September 11, it was understood that with modern technology, the rich and powerful will lose their near monopoly of the means of violence and can expect to suffer atrocities on home soil.

— Noam Chomsky

What happened in the missile crisis in October 1962 has been prettified to make it look as if acts of courage and thoughtfulness abounded. The truth is that the whole episode was almost insane.

— Noam Chomsky

When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: "Why do I care if my high school's team wins the football game? I don't know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me... why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense." But the point is, it does make sense: It's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact, it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports.

— Noam Chomsky

When Rumsfeld gets up on television and says we have definitive intelligence that al-Qaeda is working with Iraq, how is an ordinary citizen supposed to react? They won't tell you the evidence, and when anyone asks, they say, 'Well, you know: It's secret.'

— Noam Chomsky

Willingness to be puzzled is a valuable trait to cultivate, from childhood to advanced inquiry.

— Noam Chomsky

You aren't supposed to learn that dedicated, committed effort can bring about significant changes of consciousness and understanding. That's a very dangerous idea, and therefore it's been wiped out of history.

— Noam Chomsky

You could imagine a language exactly like English except it doesn't have connectives like 'and' that allow you to make longer expressions. An infant learning truncated English would have no idea about this: They would just pick it up as they would standard English.

— Noam Chomsky