Noam Chomsky Quotes

Authoritarianism is not pretending anymore to be a real alternative to democracy, but we can see many more authoritarian practices and styles basically being smuggled into democratic governments.

To trample democracy with one’s feet and to give power to a single man over almost eighty million people is so terrible that one can very probably tremble over the events which will come here.

In 2003, I warned of a 'creeping coup' in Russia against the forces of democracy and market capitalism in Russia.

The downfall of democratic institutions in Russia doesn't add to the self-confidence of either [Vladimir] Putin or his friends, as the loss of power could lead to repercussions in Russian society.

The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism.

State violence operating under the guise of personal safety and security, while parading as a bulwark of democracy, actually does the opposite and cancels out democracy as the incommensurable sharing of existence that makes the political possible.

For the first stage of his dictatorship, Vladimir Putin was involved in destroying public space. On the first day he was in office, he introduced legislation that reformed and over five years effectively dismantled the electoral system. So anything that passes for elections in Russia today has nothing to do with actual elections.

All democracies turn into dictatorships - but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it's Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea.

Vladimir Putin is a dictator. He's not a leader. Anybody who thinks otherwise doesn't know Russian history and they don't know Vladimir Putin. Hillary Clinton knows exactly who this guy is. John McCain said, I look in his eyes and I see KGB. And Hillary kind of has that same feeling.

North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.

[Liberals] are always accusing us of repressing their speech. I say let's do it. Let's repress them. ... Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the First Amendment.

The more there are riots, the more repressive actin will take place, and the more we face the danger of a right-wing takeover and eventually a fascist society.

As an organized political group, the Communists have done nothing to damage our society a fraction as much as what their enemies have done in the name of defending us against subversion.

The chief difference [between totalitarian and free countries] is that only the totalitarians appear clearly to know how they want to achieve that result, while the free world has only its past achievements to show, being by its very nature unable to offer any detailed "plan" for further growth.

The slightest sign of stability is used by local authoritarian leaders to bargain for the sympathies of Western countries that are, for the sake of a balanced relationship, bound to turn a blind eye to obvious, blatant violations of human rights and the deconstruction of democratic institutions in these countries.

The military state is the final form to which every planned economy tends rapidly.

Venezuela has gone from being a democratic country 15 years ago to being totally not a democracy today. Usually that de-democratization doesn't take the form of a heavy handed police state.

The essence of fascism is to make laws forbidding everything and then enforce them selectively against your enemies.

In Germany democracy died by the headman's axe. In Britain it can be by pernicious anaemia.

The notion of democracy beginning to emerge scares the ideologues, the totalitarians, those who want to impose their vision. It just frightens them.

That's what the left is always doing. They have an ideal, and they want people to conform to it. When people don't conform to it, they end up being beaten into the mold. And beaten sometimes hard enough so that if they don't fit, then they kill them. That's what happened in the Soviet Union and China.

From our perspective now, there is a not a huge understanding about the totalitarian Communism that Soviet Russia practiced during the 1950s - it was an atrocious system.

But even the Four Horsemen of Kidporn, Dope Dealers, Mafia and Terrorists don't worry me as much as totalitarian governments. It's been a long century, and we've had enough of them.

Despotism can do without faith but freedom cannot.

We now live in a country with a thousand political prisoners, a country where each week there are new trials, where people are put in jail because they liked something on the Internet.