Skip to content

A grammar of a language purports to be a description of the ideal speaker-hearer’s intrinsic competence. If the grammar is, furthermore, perfectly explicit—in other words, if it does not rely on the intelligence of the understanding reader but rather provides an explicit analysis of his contribution—we may (somewhat redundantly) call it a generative grammar.

— Noam Chomsky Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965)

Another quote →

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 →

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.