Noam Chomsky Quotes

The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy.

In Cuba we have one party, but in the U.S. there is very little difference. Both parties are an expression of the ruling class.

America's corporate and political elites now form a regime of their own and they're privatizing democracy. All the benefits - the tax cuts, policies and rewards flow in one direction: up.

This country has always been run by elite, and it's an elitist democracy. And that's not a radical concept. It's elitist democracy. When people talk about democracy, they don't talk - really talk about participatory democracy, until the point that we get us at Election Day.

The majority does not rule in America, but the minority shouldn't hijack it. And it's because we're afraid. They have isolated us and made us feel as though we're alone. We're not.

If you cannot reconcile the difference between the elite that stay behind the scene and the right of the people, that's going to be forever chaos. It's time to compromise, to allow more democracy. Those who are stay behind the scenes must hand off and observe the law.

All societies, including societies called democratic, are ruled by a minority.

We are at great risk in our democracy for failing to understand the great depths of poverty.

Government is everywhere to a great extent controlled by powerful minorities, with an interest distinct from that of the mass of the people.

Shall we judge a country by the majority, or the minority? By the minority, surely.

The United States is pursuing a series of goals (spreading democracy, asserting its hegemony, securing oil supplies) that are ultimately incompatible.

Why would a powerful elite ever consent to government of the people, by the people, and for the people? Democratic institutions would soon encroach on the interests of the privileged few if political equality were fully enforced. This dilemma is especially central to the study of democracy in Latin America, where social and economic inequality are so great that economic elites are often threatened by pressure to share their wealth,(1) and often have sufficient political resources to respond by having democratic governments removed.

The problems of elites is an old one for which Americans have found no solid answer.

So one of the things I want to focus on is how we can show how taking on private financing is taking on this fundamental democratic threat.

The Honours List is accused of being too top heavy, rewarding those born with a silver spoon in their mouth - as if hereditary titles and accidents of birth are incompatible with democracy. But if you stop to think about it, what is more democratic than nature?

I only became involved in politics when democracy returned to Bolivia. Then, unluckily in democracy, we ran into the inheritance of 20 years of military government, a great deal of debt, and a great deal of expense.

How can we even call this a Democracy when the House, the Senate, the White House, and now the Supreme Court are all controlled by the representatives of a minority group in America?

The real nightmare resides in a society that hides behind the mutually informing and poisonous notions of colorblindness and a post-racial society, a convenient rhetorical obfuscation that allows white Americans to ignore the institutional and individual racist ideologies, practices and policies that cripple any viable notion of justice and democracy.

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.

We're supposed to believe that oil had nothing to do with it, that if Iraq were exporting pickles or jelly and the center of world oil production were in the South Pacific that the United States would've liberated them anyway. It has nothing to do with the oil, what a crass idea. Anyone with their head screwed on knows that that can't be true.

Whenever we defend democracy we find oil.

Democracy is always harmful to elite interests. Almost by definition.

In a normal democracy, you protect the individual from the excessive power of the state. In Turkey, power elites try to protect the state - as if this state were fragile and needed protection - when in fact, it's too powerful already.

Doctor, I have more education than most white people.

Private appropriation of the Earth’s surface, the natural resources, and the means of life is nothing less a crime than a crime against humanity, but the comparative few who are beneficiaries of this iniquitous social arrangement, far from being viewed as criminals meriting punishment, are the exalted rulers of society, and the people they exploit gladly render them homage and obeisance.