Do you train for passing tests or do you train for creative inquiry?
I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.
Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.
Religion is based on the idea that God is an imbecile.
If you’re teaching, say, physics, there’s no point in persuading a student that you’re right. You want to encourage them to find out what the truth is, which is probably that you’re wrong.
If you’re independent-minded in school, you’re probably going to get in trouble very early on. That’s not the trait that’s being preferred or cultivated.
Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that’s where the light is. It has no other choice.
That’s the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody’s going to be against, and everybody’s going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything.
If you give up every time you don’t achieve the immediate gain you want, you’re just guaranteeing that the worst is going to happen… You can’t expect an easy victory after one protest march.
No honest journalist should be willing to describe himself or herself as ’embedded.’ To say, ‘I’m an embedded journalist’ is to say, ‘I’m a government Propagandist.
The number of people killed by the sanctions in Iraq is greater than the total number of people killed by all weapons of mass destruction in all of history.
Peace is preferable to war. But it’s not an absolute value, and so we always ask, “What kind of peace?
If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.
For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.
That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.
This Sarah Palin phenomenon is very curious. I think somebody watching us from Mars—they would think the country has gone insane.
People who call themselves supporters of Israel are actually supporters of its moral degeneration and ultimate destruction.
The European reaction to Obama is a European delusion.
The debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny.
It is useful to remember that no matter where we turn, there is rarely any shortage of elevated ideals to accompany the resort to violence.
You aren’t supposed to learn that dedicated, committed effort can bring about significant changes of consciousness and understanding. That’s a very dangerous idea, and therefore it’s been wiped out of history.
It is quite possible–overwhelmingly probable, one might guess–that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology
Thinking is a human feature. Will AI someday really think? That’s like asking if submarines swim. If you call it swimming then robots will think, yes.
Small differences in a system of great power can have enormous consequences. [Source: Al Jazeera ‘Upfront’ interview]
Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.
…if you ask me whether or not I’m an atheist, I wouldn’t even answer. I would first want an explanation of what it is that I’m supposed not to believe in, and I’ve never seen an explanation.
Willingness to be puzzled is a valuable trait to cultivate, from childhood to advanced inquiry.
The kind of work that should be the main part of life is the kind of work you would want to do if you weren’t being paid for it. It’s work that comes out of your own internal needs, interests and concerns.
The social system is taking on a form in which finding out what you want to do is less and less of an option because your life is too structured, organised, controlled and disciplined.
It is probable that the most inhuman monsters, even the Himmlers and the Mengeles, convince themselves that they are engaged in noble and courageous acts.
The principle of universality is not a ‘theory’. Just moral truism.
If it’s wrong when they do it, it’s wrong when we do it.
…the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon.
[W]e have a democracy that uses free elections to put in place known obstructionists, and a media that disproportionately gives a forum to economically driven ideology over sound science.
It’s not radical Islam that worries the US — it’s independence
Another problem with the official definitions of terror is that it follows from them that the US is a leading terrorist state.
See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence.
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.
Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum….
All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.
He wants to focus on what he calls ‘cultural issues.’ That makes sense, because when you’re going to rob people blind you don’t want to have them focus their attention on economic issues.
The advertising industry’s prime task is to ensure that uninformed consumers make irrational choices, thus undermining market theories that are based on just the opposite.
Life among clones would not be worth living, and a sane person will only rejoice that others have abilities that they do not share. That should be elementary.
It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.
The ritual denunciation of the so-called ‘socialist’ states is replete with distortions and often outright lies.
If we do not believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we do not believe in it at all.
In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society. In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category.
The new crimes that the US and Israel were committing in Gaza as 2009 opened do not fit easily into any standard category—except for the category of familiarity.
The murder of Lumumba, in which the U.S. was involved, in the Congo destroyed Africa’s major hope for development. Congo is now total horror story, for years.
Our only real hope for democracy is that we get the money out of politics entirely and establish a system of publicly funded elections.
In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress ‘suspects.’
There are two problems for our species’ survival – nuclear war and environmental catastrophe – and we’re hurtling towards them. Knowingly.
Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.
The major advances in speed of communication and ability to interact took place more than a century ago. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph was far more radical than that from telephone to email!
The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.
Humans have certain properties and characteristics which are intrinsic to them, just as every other organism does. That’s human nature.
The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.
I don’t join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn’t have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in Heaven – that’s none of my business, ultimately. I won’t lecture her on the philosophy of science.
If you are giving a graduate course you don’t try to impress the students with oratory, you try to challenge them, get them to question you.
Death and genitals are things that frighten people, and when people are frightened, they develop means of concealment and aggression. It is common sense.
I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.
The close Turkish-Israeli relations go back to the late 1950s – military intelligence, commercial, more recently, tourism and cultural relations.
For 500 years, since European explorers came, Latin American countries had been separated from one another. They had very limited relations. Integration is a prerequisite for independence.
In 1949, China declared independence – an event known in Western discourse as ‘the loss of China’ in the U.S. – with bitter recriminations and conflict over who was responsible for that loss.
Social Security is based on a principle. It’s based on the principle that you care about other people. You care whether the widow across town, a disabled widow, is going to be able to have food to eat.
Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.
I stated that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are ‘among the most unspeakable crimes in history.’ I took no position on just where they stand on the scale of horrors relative to Auschwitz, the bombing of Chungking, Lidice, and so on.
Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated – Japan’s attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example.
If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.
Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.
The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another.
Governments are not representative. They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are dominant and rich.
The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.
The Washington leadership has put aside non-proliferation programmes and devoted its energies and resources to driving the country to war by extraordinary deceit, then trying to manage the catastrophe it created in Iraq.
What happened in the missile crisis in October 1962 has been prettified to make it look as if acts of courage and thoughtfulness abounded. The truth is that the whole episode was almost insane.
If you’re worried about the deficit, pay attention to the fact that it’s almost all attributable to military spending and the totally dysfunctional health program.
The whole infrastructure of air travel was, and is, part of government policy. It is not a natural development of a free economic system – at least not in the way that is claimed. The same is true of the roads, of course.
Today, we have private airline companies, but if you take a look at a Boeing plane next time you travel, you’ll see that you are basically taking a ride on a modified bomber.
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.
Well before September 11, it was understood that with modern technology, the rich and powerful will lose their near monopoly of the means of violence and can expect to suffer atrocities on home soil.
The country that consistently ranks among the highest in educational achievement is Finland. A rich country, but education is free. Germany, education is free. France, education is free.
Congressional Republicans are dismantling the limited environmental protections initiated by Richard Nixon, who would be something of a dangerous radical in today’s political scene.
Free speech has been used by the Supreme Court to give immense power to the wealthiest members of our society.
Descriptive grammar is an attempt to give an account of what the current system is for either a society or an individual, whatever you happen to be studying.
It is pretty ironic that the so-called ‘least advanced’ people are the ones taking the lead in trying to protect all of us, while the richest and most powerful among us are the ones who are trying to drive the society to destruction.
In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society.
In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.