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If... the powerful are able to fix the premises of discourse, to decide what the general populace is allowed to see, hear, and think about, and to “manage” public opinion by regular propaganda campaigns, the standard view of how the system works is at serious odds with reality.

— Noam Chomsky

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Truth

More quotes by Noam Chomsky

It is the fundamental duty of the citizen to resist and to restrain the violence of the state.

As the most powerful state, the U.S. makes its own laws, using force and conducting economic warfare at will.

Because they don't teach the truth about the world, schools have to rely on beating students over the head with propaganda about democracy.

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them.

All Noam Chomsky quotes →

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You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion.

Julian Assange

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Socrates

I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.

Edward Teller

Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.

Ulysses S. Grant Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Noam Chomsky (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.