Noam Chomsky Quotes About Achievement

Donald Trump and Sean Spicer do one thing after another to keep the media attention focused on them. And it works. These legislative achievements are being made which are chipping away at anything the government has that's of any use to anybody. Paul Ryan, I think, is the most dangerous guy in the government. He knows what he's doing. And it's very systematic. I presume he's behind the cabinet appointments, but it's pretty amazing that every single cabinet appointment is somebody devoted to destroying that part of government.

Noam Chomsky

Source: www.truth-out.org
My intellectual achievement was retarded when I went to high school. I sort of sank into a black hole because I had to go to the high-achieving, academic public high school.

Noam Chomsky

David Barsamian, Noam Chomsky (2001). “Propaganda and the Public Mind: Conversations with Noam Chomsky”, p.19, Pluto Press
Pick the topic you like: the Middle East, international terrorism, Central America, whatever it is - the picture of the world that's presented to the public has only the remotest relation to reality. The truth of the matter is buried under edifice after edifice of lies upon lies. It's all been a marvelous success from the point of view in deterring the threat of democracy, achieved under conditions of freedom, which is extremely interesting. It's not like a totalitarian state, where it's done by force. These achievements are under conditions of freedom.

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky (2011). “Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda”, p.37, Seven Stories Press
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.

Noam Chomsky
Immediately after 11 September, the U.S. closed down the Somali charitable network Al-Barakaat on grounds that it was financing terror. This achievement was hailed one of the great successes of the 'war on terror.' In contrast, Washington's withdrawal of its charges as without merit a year later aroused little notice.

Noam Chomsky

"How the Magna Carta became a Minor Carta, part 2" by Noam Chomsky, www.theguardian.com. July 25, 2012.
So yes in theory there is a kind of a formal democracy and in many ways these were achievements and an improvement over the feudal system and more advanced than anything else in the world, but nothing that we ought to call democracy.

Noam Chomsky

Interview with Jegan Vincent de Paul, chomsky.info. August 15, 2012.
In Western Europe, Turkey is regarded as uncivilized, so they can't come in into the European Union until they're civilized. I think it's the other way around. If you could achieve the level of civilization of, say, Turkish intelectuals, it would be quite an achievement.

Noam Chomsky

Source: theanarchistlibrary.org

We naturally assume that our mental structures are universal. But I suppose an outside biologist looking at us would see something very different. He would see that, like other organisms, we have a narrow sphere within which we are very good, but that sphere is very limited. And that, in fact, the very achievements we can have within that sphere are related to lack of achievements in other spheres.