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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.

— Noam Chomsky

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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.

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

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The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick.

Martin Buber What is Man? (1938)

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

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.