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–even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. Noam Chomsky
Some Similar Quotes
  1. The soul is healed by being with children. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  2. Friends are the family you choose (~ Nin/Ithilnin, Elven rogue). - Jess C. Scott

  3. Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public. - Cornel West

  4. I suppose it’s not a social norm, and not a manly thing to do – to feel, discuss feelings. So that’s what I’m giving the finger to. Social norms and stuff…what good are social norms, really? I think all they do is project a limited... - Jess C. Scott

  5. Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future - and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people. - Albert Camus

More Quotes By Noam Chomsky
  1. Do you train for passing tests or do you train for creative inquiry?

  2. I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.

  3. The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values.

  4. 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.

  5. Religion is based on the idea that God is an imbecile.

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