There Is A Narrow Class Of Uses Of Language Where You Intend To Communicate. Communication Refers To An Effort To Get People To Understand What One Means. And That, Certainly, Is One Use Of Language And A Social Use Of It. But I Don't Think It Is The Only Social Use Of Language. Nor Are Social Uses The Only Uses Of Language.

-Noam Chomsky

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There Is A Narrow

Noam Chomsky

Topic

Communication

Mean

Thinking

More From Noam Chomsky

With Regard To Freedom Of Expression There Are Basically Two Positions: You Defend It Vigorously For Views You Hate, Or You Reject It In Favor Of Stalinist/fascist Standards.

Hate

Views

Expression

Suppose Vietnam Could Separate Itself From The American Dominated Global System And Carry Out A Successful Social And Economic Development. Then That Is Very Dangerous Because Then It Could Be A Model To Other Movements And Groups In Neighboring Countries. And Gradually There Could Be An Erosion From Within By Indigenous Forces Of American Domination Of The Region.

Country

Successful

Erosion

The Most Striking Aspect Of Linguistic Competence Is What We May Call The 'creativity Of Language,' That Is, The Speaker's Ability To Produce New Sentences, Sentences That Are Immediately Understood By Other Speakers Although They Bear No Physical Resemblance To Sentences Which Are 'familiar.

Creativity

May

Bears

Silicon Valley Benefits, As All Of Industry, From Highly Protectionist Policy - Patent Policies And Things Like That - Which Come Out Of The Government.

Government

Valleys

Benefits

I Don't Buy Much. Almost Buy Nothing. I Buy What I Need, Do It The Easiest Way Possible.

Needs

Way

The Very Properties Of The Human Mind That Provide An Enormous Scope For Human Genius In Some Domains Will Serve As Barriers To Progress In Other Domains, Just As The Properties That Enable Each Child To Acquire A Complex And Highly Articulated Human Language Block The Acquisition Of Other Imaginable Linguistic Systems.

Children

Block

Mind

A Basic Principle Of Modern State Capitalism Is That Costs And Risks Are Socialized To The Extent Possible, While Profit Is Privatized.

Risk

Principles

Cost

The Imf Economists Were Doubtless Shaken By The Extreme Failures Of Their Prescriptions Over Many Years, And By The Collapse Of The Intellectual Edifice Of Economic Theory On Which They Were Relying.

Years

Intellectual

Imf

If You Don't Like What Someone Has To Say, Argue With Them.

Arguing

Ifs

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.

Country

Latin

Years

When I Arrived In Laos And Found Young Americans Living There, Out Of Free Choice, I Was Surprised. After Only A Week, I Began To Have A Sense Of The Appeal Of The Country And Its People - Along With Despair About Its Future.

Country

People

Choices

I Was Told By Journalists Who Can't Publish It That There Are In Mexico, Close To The U.s. Border, Big Areas That Used To Be Devoted To Agriculture That Are Now Devoted To Poppies. They Say You Can't Get In There Because They're Guarded, First By The Cartels, But Also By The Army, Which Goes Hand In Hand With The Cartels.

Army

Hands

Agriculture

Under Capitalism, We Can't Have Democracy By Definition. Capitalism Is A System In Which The Central Institutions Of Society Are In Principle Under Autocratic Control.

Democracy

Principles

Definitions

'reform' Is A Word You Always Aughta' Watch Out For. 'reform' Is A Change That You're Supposed To Like. And Watch It - As Soon As You Hear The Word 'reform', You Should Reach For Your Wallet And See Who's Lifting It.

Reform

Watches

Politician

Not Being Optimistic Falls A Long Way Short Of Predicting That All Is Finished.

Fall

Optimistic

Long

One Substitute For The Disappearing Evil Empire (the Soviet Union) Has Been The Threat Of Drug Traffickers From Latin America. In Early September 1989, A Major Government-media Blitz Was Launched By The President. That Month The Ap Wires Carried More Stories About Drugs Than About Latin America, Asia, The Middle East And Africa Combined. If You Looked At Television, Every News Program Had A Big Section On How Drugs Were Destroying Our Society, Becoming The Greatest Threat To Our Existence, Etc.

Latin

Media

Government

The Crimes Against Palestinians In The Occupied Territories And Elsewhere, Particularly Lebanon, Are So Shocking That The Only Emotionally Valid Reaction Is Rage And A Call For Extreme Actions. But That Does Not Help The Victims. And, In Fact, It's Likely To Harm Them.

Doe

Lebanon

Territory

Another Recollection Is That [ Paul Johnson] Mostly Kept Away From Ideas And Dedicated Activism, And Concentrated On Sex Lives And Other Gossip.

Sex

Ideas

Gossip

The Dynamics Of The Taliban Now Appear To Be Very Different And Complex, In Both Afghanistan And Pakistan, As They Attack Governments And Mainstream Parties.

Party

Government

Different

I Do Not Feel That We Should Set Up People As "models"; Rather Actions, Thoughts, Principles.

People

Principles

Action

The Un To Some Extent Diffuses U.s. Power. Therefore It's Less Direct An Agency Of The United States Than The U.s. Army Is. But Still, It Can't Escape The Distribution Of Power In The World.

Army

Distribution Of Power

Agency

September 11 Shocked Many Americans Into An Awareness That They Had Better Pay Much Closer Attention To What The Us Government Does In The World And How It Is Perceived. Many Issues Have Been Opened For Discussion That Were Not On The Agenda Before. That's All To The Good.

Government

Issues

September 11

People Are Capable Of Seeing The Deceit They're Ensnared In. They Just Have To Make The Effort.

People

Effort

Deceit

The Corporations Plainly Want Academic Scholarship To Create A Web Of Mystification That Will Avoid Any Public Awareness Of The Way In Which Power Actually Functions In The Society, And The Faculty Has Caught The Message And They Do It Magnificently.

Power

Society

Want

The Japanese Bombing Of Pearl Harbor Led To Many Very Good Things. If You Follow The Trail, It Led To Kicking Europeans Out Of Asia - That Saved Tens Of Millions Of Lives In India Alone.

India

Kicking

Pearls

Terror Became A Big Issue When The Reagan Administration Came In. They Immediately Announced [their Plans] And Kind Of Disparaged Carter's Alleged Human Rights Programs. The Main Issue Is State-directed International Terrorism. Right At That Time That Big Industry Developed. That's When You Start Getting The Academic Departments On Terrorism.

Issues

Rights

Administration

The Actual Consequences Of Plan Colombia Are To Devastate Peasant Communities, Which Have Been Driven To Drug Production. These Peasants Have No Particular Desire To Grow Coca, But Their Other Means Of Livelihood Have Been Wiped Out.

Mean

Community

Drug

Concentration Of Wealth Yields Concentration Of Political Power. And Concentration Of Political Power Gives Rise To Legislation That Increases And Accelerates The Cycle.

Yield

Concentration Of Wealth

Giving

There's A Strange Myth Of Anglo-saxonism. When The University Of Virginia Was Founded By Thomas Jefferson, For Example, Its Law School Offered The Study Of "anglo-saxon Law." And That Myth Of Anglo-saxonism Carries Right Over Into The Early Twentieth Century.

School

Virginia

Law

The Threat Is That The Public Will Know What The Government Is Up To. Any System Of Power Is Going To Want To Keep Free From Public Surveillance, That's Natural. Its Shouldn't Be But, Its Very Natural.

Government

Want

Surveillance

The First Thing You Ought To Do Is Verify What I Present. Just Because I Say It Doesn't Make It True. So Check It Out, See What Looks Correct, What Looks Wrong, Look At Other Material Which Wasn't Discussed, Figure Out What The Truth Really Is. That's What You've Got A Brain For.

Brain

Looks

Firsts

That's The Standard Technique Of Privatization: Defund, Make Sure Things Don't Work, People Get Angry, You Hand It Over To Private Capital.

Hands

People

Technique

It Is An Astonishing Fact About The Current Era That In The Most Powerful Country In World History, With A High Level Of Education And Privilege, One Of The Two Political Parties Virtually Denies The Well-established Facts About Anthropogenic Climate Change.

Country

Powerful

Party

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.

Insane

Looks

October

The United States Is Off The International Spectrum In Religious Extremism.

Religious

United States

Spectrum

Sectors Of Power Are Not Going To Favor The Flourishing Of Dissidence.

Favors

Flourishing

You Can’t Have Meaningful Political Democracy Without Functioning Economic Democracy.

Meaningful

Political

Democracy

The Drones Are A Terrorist Weapon, They Not Only Kill Targets But Also Terrorise Other People.

People

Drones

Target

The Old-fashioned Idea Is That Responsibility Falls Upon Those Who Borrow And Lend. Money Was Not Borrowed By Campesinos, Assembly Plant Workers, Or Slum-dwellers. The Mass Of The Population Gained Little From Borrowing, Indeed Often Suffered Grievously From Its Effects.

Fall

Responsibility

Ideas

George Kennan Is Another Extreme Case. He Was The American Consul In Berlin Until The War Between Germany And The United States Broke Out In December 1941. And Until Then He Was Writing Pretty Supportive Statements Back Stressing That We Shouldn't Be So Hard On The Nazis If They Were Doing Something We Didn't Agree With - Basically Repeating The Idea That They Were People We Could Do Business With.

War

Stress

Writing

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.

Lying

Hate

People

It Has Been Known For Some Time That A Major Nuclear War Might Lead To Nuclear Winter That Would Destroy The Attacker As Well As The Target. And Threats Are Now Mounting, Particularly At The Russian Border, Confirming The Prediction Of George Kennan And Other Prominent Figures That Nato Expansion, Particularly The Way It Was Undertaken, Would Prove To Be A "tragic Mistake," A "policy Error Of Historic Proportions."

War

Mistake

Winter

Surely Few If Any Readers Have Come Across The Sentence They Are Now Reading, And Someone Who Had By Chance Heard Or Seen It Could Not Possibly Remember Such A Fact.

Reading

Facts

Chance

As A Tactic, Violence Is Absurd. No One Can Compete With The Government In Violence, And The Resort To Violence, Which Will Surely Fail, Will Simply Frighten And Alienate Some Who Can Be Reached, And Will Further Encourage The Ideologists And Administrators Of Forceful Repression.

Government

Tactics

Violence

A Woman Was The Property Of Her Father Or Her Husband And That Remained True Right Into The Twentieth Century. It Wasn't Until 1975 That Women Had A Guaranteed Right To Serve On Federal Juries.

Husband

Father

Century

Very Urgent Measures Need To Be Taken, And Without Much Delay, In Dealing With The Ongoing Destruction Of The Environment.

Taken

Delay

Needs

Evolutionary Theory Has Nothing To Say, In General, As To Whether Cheating Is More Advantageous Than Cooperating. There Are Many Circumstances In Which The Contrary Would Be True, And Empirical Evidence, Though It Exists, Has Little Bearing On Real Situations.

Cheating

Real

Would Be

At The Peak Of The So-called Great Success Of Neoliberal Economics, In 2007, Right Before The Crash, Non-supervisory Workers Were At Wages Considerably Lower Than In 1979, When The Neoliberal Assault Was Taking Off. That Perfectly Naturally Causes Resentment And Fear, And Combines With A Tendency To Blame The Most Vulnerable.

Wages

Causes

Resentment

Armed Attack Has A Definition In International Law. It Means Sudden, Overwhelming, Instantaneous Ongoing Attack.

Mean

Law

Ongoing

The Irish Sea Is A Chasm, And It Just Depends Who's Been Holding The Whip For 800 Years And Who's Been Under It For 800 Years.

Years

Sea

Chasms

There Had Been A Free And Open Election In Haiti In The Early 1990s And President Jean-bertrand Aristide Won, A Populist Priest. A Few Months Later Came The Expected Military Coup - A Very Vicious Military Junta Took Over, Of Which The United States Was Passively Supportive. Not Openly, Of Course, But Haitians Started To Flee From The Terror And Were Sent Back And On Towards Guantanamo Bay. Of Course, That Is Against International Law. But The United States Pretended That They Were "economic Refugees."

Military

Law

President

Academics Are Not Necessarily Nice People.

Nice

People

Nice People

The Local Grocery Store Was A Gathering, A Community Place. You Knew The Owner, If You Didn't Have Any Money They'd Let You Go For A Couple Days. You Talked. It Was A Friendly Place. Supermarkets Are Totally Impersonal. I Mean, You May Say Hello To The Checkout Girl Or Something, But The Personal Connections Are All Gone.

Girl

Couple

Mean

If You Are Not Offending People Who Ought To Be Offended, You're Doing Something Wrong.

Offended You

Offending

People

Remember, The U.s. Is A Powerful State, It's Not Like Libya. If Libya Wants To Carry Out Terrorist Acts, They Hire Carlos The Jackal Or Something. The United States Hires Terrorist States.

Powerful

Want

United States

It’s A Shameful Moment For U.s. Media When It Insists On Being Subservient To The Grotesque Propaganda Agencies Of A Violent, Aggressive State.

Agency

Media

Moments

Anarcho-syndic Alism Took For Granted That Working People Ought To Control Their Own Work, Its Conditions, The Enterprises In Which They Work, Along With Communities, So They Should Be Associated With One Another In Free Associations, And Democracy Of That Kind Should Be The Foundational Elements Of A More General Free Society.

People

Community

Democracy

It Is The Worst Atrocity Underway [in Rwanda]. But It's Barely In The Media, And People Just Don't Know About It. And That's Quite Generally True.

Media

People

Atrocities

One Should Be Cautious About "general Conceptions." I Think A Strong Case Can Be Made That Activism Today Is As High As Ever, Perhaps More So, And Is Also Taking New And Significant Forms. There Has Never Been Anything Like The International Solidarity Movements That Began To Take Shape In The 1980s, Right In The Mainstream, Or The Global Justice Movements That Have Become A Very Powerful Force In Later Years. It's True That The Society Is Highly Atomized, Which Does Induce A Sense Of Hopelessness Often - Quite Mistakenly I Think.

Strong

Powerful

Thinking

Education Is Really Aimed At Helping Students Get To The Point Where They Can Learn On Their Own. . .

Helping

Students

In The United States, The Day When You Pay Your Taxes Is A Day Of Mourning Because This Alien Force - The Government - Is Coming To Rob You Of Your Hard-earned Money. That's The General Attitude, And It's A Tremendous Victory For The Opponents Of Democracy, And, Of Course, Any Privileged Sector Is Going To Hate Democracy. You Can See It In The Healthcare Debate.

Attitude

Hate

Government

Right To A Speedy Jury Trial And So On And So Forth. But What Do They Mean By 'person'? It Certainly Didn't Mean Individuals With Flesh And Blood Like Native Americans Who Weren't Persons, They Don't Have Any Rights.

Native American

Mean

Rights

Workers In Different Countries Can Easily Be Played Off Against Each Other.

Country

Different

Workers

The More Privilege You Have, The More Opportunity You Have. The More Opportunity You Have, The More Responsibility You Have.

Responsibility

Opportunity

Privilege

The U.s. Is, To A Very Unusual Extent, A Business-run Society.

Running

Unusual

The Rascal Multitude Are The Proper Targets Of The Mass Media And A Public Education System Geared To Obedience And Training In Needed Skills, Including The Skill Of Repeating Patriotic Slogans On Timely Occasions.

Patriotic

Media

Skills

Those Of Us Lucky Enough To Have A Share Of Privilege In The More Free Societies Should Not Be Asking This Question, But Doing Something To Answer It.

Lucky

Asking

Answers

What Is The Nature Of The Genetic Endowment? How Does Acquisition Proceed? Etc. Scientists Do Routinely Ask Similar Questions About The Visual System, System Of Motor Organisation, And Others - Including, In Fact, The Digestive System.

Doe

Acquisition

Etc

It Hardly Takes More Than A Day In Gaza To Begin To Appreciate What It Must Be Like To Try To Survive In The World’s Largest Open-air Prison.

Air

Appreciate

Trying

[mikhail] Gorbachev Said That He Would Agree To The Unification Of Germany, And Even Adherence Of Germany To Nato, Which Was Quite A Concession, If Nato Didn't Move To East Germany. And [george] Bush And [james] Baker Promised Verbally, That's Critical, Verbally That Nato Would Not Expand "one Inch To The East," Which Meant East Germany. Nobody Was Talking About Anything Farther At The Time. They Would Not Expand One Inch To The East. Now That Was A Verbal Promise. It Was Never Written. Nato Immediately Expanded To East Germany.

Moving

East Germany

Talking

The United States In Many Ways Resembles A Third World Country - Far More Elevated, But It Has Many Of Those Structural Characteristics: The Extreme Inequality Of Wealth, The Deterioration Of Infrastructure Because It Only Serves Poor People, Predatory Operations, Huge Corruption, And So On.

Country

People

United States

See, People With Power Understand Exactly One Thing: Violence.

People

Violence

One Thing

America Has Always Been The Richest And Most Secure, And Sometimes The Most Dangerous Country In The World. In The Early Years, The Danger Was To Everybody Near Us, Slaves, Native Americans, Mexicans. It Finally Expanded In 1898 To The Caribbean, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, And The Philippines.

Country

Native American

Years

The Public Is Easily Amenable To Lies: The More Lies There Are, The Greater The Support For War. For Instance, When The Public Was Told That Saddam Hussein Would Attack The U.s., This Increased Support For The War.

War

Lying

Support

There's Very Little Dislike Of Americans In The World, Shown By Repeated Polls, And The Dissatisfaction - That Is, The Hatred And The Anger - They Come From Acceptance Of American Values, Not A Rejection Of Them, And Recognition That They're Rejected By The U.s. Government And By U.s. Elites, Which Does Lead To Hatred And Anger.

Acceptance

Government

Rejection

As Any Good Teacher Knows, The Methods Of Instruction And The Range Of Material Covered Are Matters Of Small Importance As Compared With The Success In Arousing The Natural Curiosity Of The Students And Stimulating Their Interest In Exploring On Their Own.

Teacher

Teaching

Curiosity

The Escalation To Attack Undefended Civilian Targets Is Just A Classic Illustration Of Terrorism.

Illustration

Target

Classic

To Say That The United States Has Pursued Diplomacy With North Korea Is A Little Bit Misleading. It Did Under The Clinton Administration, Though Neither Side Completely Lived Up To Their Obligations. Clinton Didn't Do What Was Promised, Nor Did North Korea, But They Were Making Progress. So When Bush Came Into The Presidency, North Korea Had Enough Uranium Or Plutonium For Maybe One Or Two Bombs, But Then Very Limited Missile Capacity. During The Bush Years It's Exploded. The Reason Is, He Immediately Canceled The Diplomacy And He's Pretty Much Blocked It Ever Since.

Korea

Years

Two

One Contribution Scientists Can And Should Make Is To Be Clear And Explicit About The Limits Of Scientific Understanding, A Matter That Is Particularly Important In Societies Where People Are Trained To Defer To Alleged Experts.

People

Understanding

Important

It Is Now Well-known That The Taliban's Creation Was Facilitated By The Cia And The Isi As Part Of The 1980s Anti-soviet War.

War

Well Known

Creation

The Whole Educational And Professional Training System Is A Very Elaborate Filter, Which Just Weeds Out People Who Are Too Independent, And Who Think For Themselves, And Who Don't Know How To Be Submissive, And So On -- Because They're Dysfunctional To The Institutions.

Weed

Educational

Learning

Why Was The United States So Afraid Of An Independent South Vietnam? Well, I Think The Reason Again Is Pretty Clear From The Internal Government Documents. Precisely What They Were Afraid Of Was That The "takeover" Of South Vietnam By Nationalist Forces Would Not Be Brutal. They Feared It Would Be Conciliatory And That There Would Be Successful Social And Economic Development - And That The Whole Region Might Work.

Independent

Successful

Thinking

It Was Right After Woodrow Wilson's First Serious Post-world War I Repression, Which Deported Thousands Of People, Effectively Destroyed Unions And Independent Press, And So On. Right After That, The Anti-immigration Law Was Passed That Remained In Place Until The 1960s.

War

Independent

Law

I Did Not Say That Language As A Completed System Emerged In An Individual In An Instant. But I Cannot Think Of A Coherent Alternative To The Idea That Mutations Take Place In Individuals, Not Communities, So That Whatever Rewiring Of The Brain Yielded The Apparently Unique Properties Of Language, Specifically Recursive Generation Of Hierarchically Structured Expressions, Would Therefore Have Taken Place In An Individual, And Only Later Been Used Among Individuals Who Had Inherited This Capacity.

Taken

Unique

Thinking

Stakeholders - Meaning Workers And Community - The Ceo Could Just As Well Be Responsible To Them. This Presupposes There Ought To Be Management But Why Does There Have To Be Management? Why Not Have The Stakeholders Run The Industry?

Running

Community

Doe

Cuba Forces In Angola Gave A Real Shot In The Arm To The Liberation Movements, And It Also Was A Lesson To The White South Africans That The End Is Coming. They Can't Just Hope To Subdue The Continent On Racist Grounds.

Real

White

Cuba

You Have 30% Of The World Unemployed, A Huge Amount Of Work, That Needs To Be Done Just Rebuilding The Society Alone.

Needs

Done

World

We Had One Or Another Form Of State Capitalism During An Extremely Brief Period Of Human History, Which Tells Us Essentially Nothing About Human Nature. If You Look At Human Societies And Human Interactions, You Can Find Anything. You Find Selfishness, You Find Altruism, You Find Sympathy.

Selfishness

Looks

Human Nature

The Childcare Tax Credit Makes Some Sense.

Credit

Taxes

Childcare

Workers And Their Families May Starve To Death In The New World Order Of Economic Rationality, But Diamond Necklaces Are Cheaper In Elegant New York Shops, Thanks To The Miracle Of The Market.

New York

Order

Miracle

Fed And Electoral College Could Use Some Tinkering, But They Are Not The Source Of The Problems.

College

Tinkering

Use

[according To The Rigid Dogma] We Have To Believe The United States Would Have So-called Liberated Iraq Even If Its Main Products Were Lettuce And Pickles And The Main Energy Resource Of The World Were In Central Africa.

Believe

Iraq

Energy

Its True That Contemporary Technology Permits Decentralization, It Also Permits Centralization. It Depends On How You Use The Technology.

Technology

Use

Permit

It's Not Radical Islam That Worries The Us -- It's Independence

Worry

Independence

Islam

Naming Our Murder Weapons After Victims Of Our Crimes: Apache, Tomahawk... It's As If The Luftwaffe Were To Call Its Fighter Planes 'jew' And 'gypsy.'

Weapons

Gypsy

Fighter

There's Something Deeply Rooted In American Culture. You Can Pretty Much Identify What It Was. You Take A Look At The History. It Was Internal Conquest. You Had To Defend Yourself Against What The Declaration Of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, An Enlightened Figure, Called The Attacks Of The "merciless Indian Savages," Whose Known Way Of Warfare Was Torture And Destruction. Also You Had A Slave Population, You Had To Protect Yourself Against Them. You Needed Guns.

Gun

Independence

Population

That's A Point That Dan Ellsberg Has Made For Years. He Said It's Kind Of Like If You And I Go Into A Grocery Store To Rob It, And I Have A Gun. The Guy May Give You The Money In The Cash Register. I'm Using The Gun Even If I Don't Shoot. Well That's Nuclear Weapons - Essential To Post-war Deterrence - They Cast A Shadow Over Everything.

War

Gun

Years

Occupy Was Not A Movement, It Was A Tactic. You Can't Sit Forever In A Park Near Wall Street. You Can't Do It For More Than A Few Months. It Was A Tactic I Had Not Predicted. If People Asked Me, I Would Have Said "don't Do It." But It Was A Great Success, An Enormous Success, With A Big Impact On People's Thinking, On People's Actions.

Wall

Thinking

Impact

In The Pre-capitalist World, Everyone Had A Place. It Might Not Have Been A Very Nice Place, Even Maybe A Horrible Place, But At Least They Had Some Place In The Spectrum Of The Society And They Had Some Kind Of A Right To Live In The Place. Now That's Inconsistent With Capitalism, Which Denies The Right To Live. You Have Only The Right To Remain On The Labour Market.

Nice

World

Might

All You Have To Do Is Read The Business Literature. In The 1930s They Were Very Frightened And They Were Concerned About How The Rising Power Of The Masses Was Hazardous To Industrialists.

Rising

Literature

Frightened

I Don't See Much Use In General Slogans. Sometimes It Is Worth Resisting Evil With Lesser Evil, Very Commonly In Fact.

Evil

Use

Facts

When Reagan Left Office, He Was The Most Unpopular Living President, Apart From Nixon, Even Below Carter. If You Look At His Years In Office, He Was Not Particularly Popular. He Was More Or Less Average. He Severely Harmed The American Economy.

Average

Years

Office

Hence, A Generative Grammar Must Be A System Of Rules That Can Iterate To Generate An Indefinitely Large Number Of Structures. This System Of Rules Can Be Analyzed Into The Three Major Components Of A Generative Grammar: The Syntactic, Phonological, And Semantic Components... The Syntactic Component Of A Grammar Must Specify, For Each Sentence, A Deep Structure That Determines Its Semantic Interpretation And A Surface Structure That Determines Its Phonetic Interpretation. The First Of These Is Interpreted By The Semantic Component; The Second, By The Phonological Component.

Numbers

Three

Firsts

The Basic Idea Which Runs Right Through Modern History And Modern Liberalism Is That The Public Has Got To Be Marginalized. The General Public Are Viewed As No More Than Ignorant And Meddlesome Outsiders, A Bewildered Herd.

Running

Ideas

Ignorant

If You Want To Control A Population... Give Them A God To Worship.

Giving

Population

Want

We Can Try To Gain Some Of The Sensibility Of Some Of The Indigenous Populations Of The World Or Our Predecessors 800 Years Ago. We Can Laugh At Them As Being Naive And Unsophisticated, But Unless We Can Gain That Sensibility That There Has To Be Rights Of Nature As Bolivians And Others Put It, Then We're Going To Be Destroyed.

Rights

Years

Laughing

[my Father] Came Over As An Immigrant And Didn't Know Any English. He Went To Work At A Sweat Shop In Baltimore. He Told Me Later That This Guy Was Coming Around, And The Guy Seemed To Be For The Workers, So He Signed Up. It Turned Out That Guy Was An Iww Organizer . My Father Didn't Regret Signing Up; He Just Really Didn't Know What Was Going On.

Regret

Father

Sweat

Given Their Unusual Privilege, Western Intellectuals Can Realistically Accomplish A Great Deal. The Limits Are Imposed By Will More Than Objective Circumstances. And About Human Will Predictions Are Without Value.

Limits

Privilege

Unusual

Anton Pannekoek Didn't Encourage Radical Workers And Other Activists Of The Anti-bolshevik Left To See Revolutionary Potential In His Work In Astronomy, For The Simple Reason That He Was Honest, And Knew There Was None To Speak Of.

Simple

Honest

Speak

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.

Needs

Want

Kind

In The United States, The Political System Is A Very Marginal Affair. There Are Two Parties, So-called, But They're Really Factions Of The Same Party, The Business Party.

Party

Two

Political

Long Before The Technology Revolution There Was Declassification Of Documents And I've Spent Quite A Lot Of Time Studying Declassified Internal Documents And Written A Lot About Them. In Fact, Anybody Who's Worked Through The Declassified Record Can See Very Clearly That The Reason For Classification Is Very Rarely To Protect The State Or The Society From Enemies. Most Of The Time It Is To Protect The State From Its Citizens, So They Don't Know What The Government Is Doing.

Technology

Government

Long

English Is A Second Language In Most Of The Educated Sectors Of Europe And Much Of The World. But Maybe In The Future Chinese Will Be. But I Doubt That National Languages Will Disappear. In Fact, To Some Extent They're Becoming More Diverse, Like In Europe.

Europe

Doubt

Chinese

In Much Of The World The U.s. Is Regarded As A Leading Terrorist State.

World

States

Terrorist

In Any Institution-factory, University, Health Center, Or Whatever-there Are A Variety Of Interests That Ought To Be Represented In Decision-making: The Work Force Itself, The Community In Which It Is Located, Users Of Its Products Or Services, Institutions That Compete For The Same Resources. These Interests Should Be Directly Represented In Democratic Structures That Displace And Eliminate Private Ownership Of The Means Of Production Or Resources, An Anachronism With No Legitimacy.

Mean

Community

Decision

A War With Pakistan Would Be An Utter Disaster.

War

Would Be

Pakistan

Anti-union Propaganda Has Been Considerably More Successful Here [ In The U.s.] Than In Europe, Even Among Working People Who Would Benefit [from] Unions.

Successful

Europe

People

My Feeling Is That The Supreme Court Reached A Reasonable Standard Of Protection Of Speech In The 1960s, A Standard Higher Than Any Other Country In The World, To My Knowledge. In Brief, Speech Should Be Protected Up To Participation In Imminent Criminal Action.

Country

Feelings

World

Trump's Principal Policies Make Clear What's Going To Happen. This Gives An Opportunity. Right Now It's Going To Take Hard Work, But It's Possible That There Could Be A Real Revival Of The Labor Movement.

Real

Hard Work

Opportunity

You Keep Plugging Away--that's The Way Social Change Takes Place. That's The Way Every Social Change In History Has Taken Place: By A Lot Of People, Who Nobody Ever Heard Of, Doing Work.

Taken

People

Way

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.

Children

Real

Ignorance

Capitalism’s Concept Of Competitive Man Who Seeks Only To Maximize Wealth And Power, Who Subjects Himself To Market Relationships, To Exploitation And External Authority, Is Anti-human And Intolerable In The Deepest Sense

Men

Wealth

Authority

As For Geoengineering, There Have Been Serious General Critiques That I Think Cannot Be Ignored, Like Clive Hamilton's, Along With Many Positive Assessments. It Is Not A Matter For Subjective Judgment Based On Guesswork And Intuition. Rather, These Are Matters That Have To Be Considered Seriously, Relying On The Best Scientific Understanding Available, Without Abandoning Sensible Precautionary Principles.

Thinking

Assessment

Understanding

Take A Look At The Current Debates In Washington, And Of Course, Everything In The Media. Only One Issue Is Discussed: The Deficit - The Least Significant Issue, But The Most Significant Issue For The Banks. The Big Problem, Joblessness, Is Barely Discussed, Even Though That's What The Public Wants, As Polls Clearly Show. That's Even What The Business Press Supports, But The Financial Institutions Are So Powerful That The Only Issue Is The Deficit, And This Runs Right Through The Intellectual Culture.

Running

Powerful

Support

The Invasion Of Iraq Was Simply A War Crime. Straight-out War Crime.

War

Iraq

Invasion

Israel Uses Sophisticated Attack Jets And Naval Vessels To Bomb Densely-crowded Refugee Camps, Schools, Apartment Blocks, Mosques, And Slums To Attack A Population That Has No Air Force, No Air Defense, No Navy, No Heavy Weapons, No Artillery Units, No Mechanized Armor, No Command In Control, No Army And Calls It A War.

War

Block

Islamic

Ceos Pretty Much Pick The Boards That Give Them Salaries And Bonuses. That's One Of The Reasons Why The Ceo-to-payment [ratio] Has So Sharply Escalated In This Country In Contrast To Europe. (they're Similar Societies And It's Bad Enough There, But Here We're In The Stratosphere. ] There's No Particular Reason For It.

Country

Europe

Giving

Around 2008 And Again In 2013 Nato Officially Offered The Ukraine The Opportunity To Join Nato. That's Something No Russian Government Is Ever Going To Accept. It's Right At The Geopolitical Heartland Of Russia.

Opportunity

Russia

Government

I Am A Child Of The Enlightenment. I Think Irrational Belief Is A Dangerous Phenomenon, And I Try To Consciously Avoid Irrational Belief. On The Other Hand, I Certainly Recognize That It's A Major Phenomenon For People In General, And You Can Understand Why It Would Be. It Does, Apparently, Provide Personal Sustenance, But Also Bonds Of Association And Solidarity And A Means For Expressing Elements Of One's Personality That Are Often Very Valuable Elements. To Many People It Does That. In My View, There's Nothing Wrong With That.

Children

Mean

Thinking

Take Pandemics. There Could Easily Be A Severe Pandemic. A Lot Of That Comes From Something We Don't Pay Much Attention To: Eating Meat. The Meat Production Industry, The Industrial Production Of Meat, Uses An Immense Amount Of Antibiotics.we're Now Running Out Of Antibiotics That Deal With The Threat Of Rapidly Mutating Bacteria. A Lot Of That Just Comes From The Meat Production Industry. Well, Do We Worry About It? Well, We Ought To Be.

Running

Worry

Meat

The Ottoman Empire . . . The Rulers In Turkey Were Fortunately So Corrupt That They Left People Alone Pretty Much - Were Mostly Interested In Robbing Them - And They Left Them Alone To Run Their Own Affairs . . . With A Lot Of Local Self Determination.

Running

Determination

Self

Today, The Danger Of Some Sort Of A Nuclear Catastrophe Is Greater Than It Was During The Cold War, And Most People Are Blissfully Unaware Of This Danger.

War

People

Today

In Fact, It's Pretty Dramatic When You Get To 1975, Very Revealing, The [vietnam] War Ends. Everybody Had To Write Something About The War, What It Meant. You Also Had Polls Of Public Opinion, And They're Dramatically Different.

War

Writing

Public Opinion

Very Commonly I Get Queries. Somebody Saw Something Of Mine On Youtube And Of Course If There Is A Talk On Youtube, There Aren't Any Footnotes - And They Want To Know Why Did You Say This. Well If They Bothered To Look Up Something In Print, They Would've Seen Why I Said That. If They Ask For Evidence, I Just Say Well Take A Look And Mention Something They Can Read And That Usually Ends The Conversation.

Looks

Want

Saws

Modern Science And Technology Can Relieve Men Of The Necessity For Specialized, Imbecile Labor. They May, In Principle, Provide The Basis For A Rational Social Order Based On Free Association And Democratic Control, If We Have The Will To Create It.

Technology

Men

Order

Plainly, Such An Approach Does Not Exclude Other Ways Of Trying To Comprehend The World. Someone Committed To It (as I Am) Can Consistently Believe (as I Do) That We Learn Much More Of Human Interest About How People Think And Feel And Act By Reading Novels Or Studying History Than From All Of Naturalistic Psychology, And Perhaps Always Will; Similarly, The Arts May Offer Appreciation Of The Heavens To Which Astrophysics Cannot Aspire.

Appreciation

Art

Reading

There Clearly Is A Serious Race Problem In The Country. Just Take A Look At What's Happening To African American Communities. For Example Wealth, Wealth In African American Communities Is Almost Zero. The History Is Striking.

Country

Zero

Race

As Long As Nuclear Weapons Exist, The Chances Of Survival Of The Human Species Are Quite Slight.

Long

Survival

Nuclear

The Big Change, The Really Radical Change In Communication, Was In The Late 19th Century. The Shift From Sailing Ships To Telegraph Is Astronomical. Everything Since Then Has Been Small Increments, Including The Internet. So You Don't Have To Wait For A Letter To Get To England In Six Weeks, You Have Almost Instant Communication. That Was An Enormous Shift.

Communication

Waiting

Sailing

For The Last Couple Of Hundred Years, There Have Been Struggles About This. Even The Fifth And Sixth Amendments Of The Constitution Talk About Personal Rights.

Couple

Struggle

Rights

My Own Feeling Is That A Corporation Has No Right To Have A Political Or Social Influence.

Political

Feelings

Corporations

I Don't Know What It Means To Say That 'the Internet Should Have A Voice In Washington'.

Mean

Should Have

Voice

People Tend To Rally Around Power.

People

John Lewis Gaddis Is Not Only The Favorite Historian Of The Reagan Administration, But He's Regarded As The Dean Of Cold War Scholarship, The Leading Figure In The American Cold War Scholarship, A Professor At Yale.

War

Yale

Administration

The Leading, The Most Respected Vietnam Historian, Military Historian Bernard Fall -he Was A Hawk Incidentally, But He Cared For The Vietnamese - He Said It Wasn't Clear To Him Whether Vietnam Could Survive As A Historical And Cultural Entity Under The Most Massive Attack That Any Region That Size Had Ever Suffered. He Was Talking About South Vietnam, Incidentally.

Military

Fall

Talking

The Intellectual World Is Deeply Conformist... We Talk A Lot About The Crimes Of Others. When It Comes To Our Own Crimes, We Are Nationalists In The Orwellian Sense.

Intellectual

World

Crime

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.

Freedom

Hero

Democracies Have

Everything Depends Very Much On Who You Are, What Your Values Are, What Your Commitments Are, What Circumstances You Live In And What Options You're Willing To Undertake, And That Determines What You Ought To Be Doing.

Commitment

Circumstances

Determine

[ Republican Party] Is Correctly Described As A "radical Insurgency" By One Of The Leading Conservative Commentators, Norman Ornstein.

Party

Conservative

Republican

...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.

Atheist

Believe

Answers

International Affairs Is Very Much Run Like The Mafia. The Godfather Does Not Accept Disobedience, Even From A Small Storekeeper Who Doesn't Pay His Protection Money. You Have To Have Obedience Otherwise The Idea Can Spread That You Don't Have To Listen To The Orders And It Can Spread To Important Places.

Running

Order

Ideas

In Fact, The Capitalist Class In The '50s Was Sort Of Part Of A Social Contract. It Was Part Of The Tenor Of The Times.

Class

Facts

Social

We Could Not Bring Democracy To South Vietnam At A Cost That We Were Willing To Accept. So It Was A Disaster. That' Is The Left Extreme.

Democracy

Cost

Vietnam

You Cannot Control Your Own Population By Force, But It Can Be Distracted By Consumption.

Population

Force

Consumption

Compare Mathematics And The Political Sciences - It's Quite Striking. In Mathematics, In Physics, People Are Concerned With What You Say, Not With Your Certification. But In Order To Speak About Social Reality, You Must Have The Proper Credentials, Particularly If You Depart From The Accepted Framework Of Thinking. Generally Speaking, It Seems Fair To Say That The Richer The Intellectual Substance Of A Field, The Less There Is A Concern For Credentials, And The Greater Is The Concern For Content.

Reality

Thinking

Order

The Most Dramatic Case Is That Of The Central Americans. Why Are People Fleeing Central America? It's Because Of The Atrocities The U.s. Committed There. Take Boston, Where There's A Fairly Large Mayan Population. These People Are Fleeing From The Highlands Of Guatemala, Where There Was Virtual Genocide In The Early 1980s Backed By Ronald Reagan. The Region Was Devastated, And People Are Still Fleeing To This Day, Yet They're Sent Back.

Boston

America

People

States Are Violent Institutions. The Government Of Any Country, Including Ours, Represents Some Sort Of Domestic Power Structure, And It's Usually Violent. States Are Violent To The Extent That They're Powerful, That's Roughly Accurate.

Country

Powerful

Government

To Summarize, Draft Resistance Can Make Use Of The Inegalitarian Nature Of American Society As A Technique For Increasing The Cost Of American Aggression, And It Threatens Values That Are Important To Those In A Decision-making Position.

Decision

Important

Technique

If Workers Are More Insecure, That's Very 'healthy' For The Society, Because If Workers Are Insecure, They Won't Ask For Wages, They Won't Go On Strike, They Won't Call For Benefits; They'll Serve The Masters Gladly And Passively. And That's Optimal For Corporations' Economic Health.

Insecure

Healthy

Wages

Moral Cowardice And Intellectual Corruption Are The Natural Concomitants Of Unchallenged Privilege.

Intellectual

Privilege

Moral

There Is No Western Concern For Issues Of Aggression, Atrocities, Human Rights Abuses And So On If There's A Profit To Be Made From Them

Rights

Issues

Abuse

Marx's Early Manuscripts, With Their Roots In The Enlightenment And Romanticism, Derived Fundamental Concepts Such As Alienation From A Conception Of Human Nature - What We Would Call Genetically Determined.

Roots

Enlightenment

Fundamentals

Take A Look At The Bombing Of Serbia In 1999. The Us Was Quite Open About The Reasons For The Bombing. A Main Reason Was To Preserve Stability And Credibility. Serbia Was Interfering With Stability, Meaning That It Was The One Part Of The Balkans That Was Not Integrated Into The Western-dominated (mostly Us-dominated) System.

Looks

Reason

Balkans

[ronald] Reagan Bitterly Hated Unions And Wanted Them Destroyed. This Began With The Air Controllers' Strike And Went On From There.

Air

Unions

Strikes

As Far As Dsa Is Concerned, I'm Perfectly Happy To Be Associated With It While Disagreeing With A Large Part Of The Leadership.

Concerned

I Think Half The Population Supports This Ban On These Dangerous Immigrants Who Are Going To Come In And Do Something, Who Knows What. And Meanwhile The Countries That Really Have Been Involved In Terrorism, They're Out. It's Kind Of Like I Think It Was Oklahoma Banning Sharia Law.

Country

Thinking

Oklahoma

If There Are Lessons To Be Drawn From The Sciences, Then That Should Be The Concern Of Everyone, Including Scientists To The Extent That They Can Make A Contribution.

Lessons

Scientist

Should

One Of The Real Problems Of Society Is That Its Far Too Atomized, What Sociologists Call Secondary Associations.

Real

Association

Problem

Democracy Is A Danger To Any Powerful Group.

Powerful

Democracy

Groups

Anyone Can Be A Moral Individual, Concerned With Human Rights And Problems; But Only A College Professor, A Trained Expert, Can Solve Technical Problems By 'sophisticated' Methods. Ergo, It Is Only Problems Of The Latter Sort That Are Important Or Real.

Real

College

Rights

Students Who Acquire Large Debts Putting Themselves Through School Are Unlikely To Think About Changing Society. When You Trap People In A System Of Debt, They Can't Afford The Time To Think.

Change

Education

Time

Technology Is Basically Neutral. It's Kind Of Like A Hammer. The Hammer Doesn't Care Whether You Use It To Build A House, Or Whether A Torturer Uses It To Crush Somebody's Skull.

Crush

Technology

Skulls

The Lessons Are, Unfortunately, That A Small Weak Country That Is Facing An Extremely Hostile And Very Violent Superpower Will Not Make Much Progress Unless There's A Strong Solidarity Movement Within The Superpower That Will Restrain Its Actions. With More Support Within The United States, I Think The Haitian Efforts Could Have Succeeded.

Country

Strong

Thinking

It Doesn't Matter What We Cover, It Matters What You Discover.

Matter

We Don't Have Polls From The Business World, But It's Pretty Clear That The Energy Corporations In America Would Be Quite Happy To Be Given Authorization To Go Back Into Iran Instead Of Leaving All That To Their Rivals. But The State Won't Allow It. And It Is Setting Up Confrontations Right Now, Very Explicitly. Part Of The Reason Is Strategic, Geo-political, Economic, But Part Of The Reason Is The Mafia Complex. They Have To Be Punished For Disobeying Us.

Iran

America

Political

It’s 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.

Powerful

People

Ironic

Students Who Acquire Large Debts Putting Themselves Through School Are Unlikely To Think About Changing Society. When You Trap People In A System Of Debt, They Can't Afford The Time To Think. Tuition Fee Increases Are A Disciplinary Technique, And By The Time Students Graduate, They Are Not Only Loaded With Debt, But Have Also Internalized The Disciplinarian Culture. This Makes Them Efficient Components Of The Consumer Economy.

School

Thinking

People

We Use The Official Definitions Of Terrorism. The Definitions In The U.s. Code, In British Law, In U.s. Army Manuals And So On. And If You Use Those Definitions It Follows Instantly That The United States Is The Leading Terrorist State In The World.

Army

Law

United States

Personally, I Am Uneasy About The Notion Of "a Politically Engaged University," For Reasons I Wrote About Over 30 Years Ago, At The Height Of Protest And Resistance (reprinted In For Reasons Of State).

Years

Height

Resistance

I Know Some Really Outstanding Turkish Journalists, And Have Been Pleased And Honored To Be Able To Join With Them A Few Times In Their Courageous Protests Against State Terror And Repression.

Able

Courageous

States

It Was Declared By Congress That Marijuana Makes People Insane. But . . . Lawyers, Defense Lawyers, Got The Idea, Ok, I Can Use This For An Insanity Defense.

Marijuana

Ideas

People

Suppose That We Believe What We Are Taught. . . . Destroying The Environment And Militarizing Outer Space Are Rational Policies . . . Of Institutional Lunacy.

Believe

Space

Taught

The Most Effective Way To Restrict Democracy Is To Transfer Decision-making From The Public Arena To Unaccountable Institutions: Kings And Princes, Priestly Castes, Military Juntas, Party Dictatorships, Or Modern Corporations.

Kings

Military

Party

When I Wrote About The Spanish Civil War Many Years Later, I Used Documents That I Picked Up When I Was A Child, As A Lot Hadn't Been Published (a Lot More Resources Are Available Now).

Children

War

Years

I Think A Very Important Aspect Of Language Has To Do With The Establishment Of Social Relations And Interactions. Often, This Is Described As Communication. But That Is Very Misleading, I Think.

Communication

Thinking

Important

At The Beginning Of His Administration, Reagan Tried Set The Basis For American Military Intervention In El Salvador - Which Is About What Kennedy Did When He Came Into Office In Regard To Vietnam. Well, When Kennedy Tried It In Vietnam, It Just Worked Like A Dream. Virtually Nobody Opposed American Bombing Of South Vietnam In 1962. It Was Not An Issue. But When Reagan Began To Talk Of Involving American Forces In El Salvador There Was A Huge Popular Uproar. And He Had To Choose A Much More Indirect Way Of Supporting The Collection Of Gangsters In Power There. He Had To Back Off.

Dream

Military

Issues

One Of The Most Interesting Reactions To Come Out Of 1968 Was In The First Publication Of The Trilateral Commission, Which Believed There Was A 'crisis Of Democracy' From Too Much Participation Of The Masses.

Interesting

Democracy

Too Much

What Can You Do To Mitigate The Likelihood That Iran Will Develop Nuclear Weapons? There's A Very Simple Method: Move Towards Establishing A Nuclear-weapons-free Zone, Which Everybody In The World Wants, But The Us Blocks.

Block

Moving

Simple

If Kids Are Studying For A Test, They're Not Going To Learn Anything. We All Know That From Our Own Experience.

Kids

Tests

Study

Bohemian Grove Seems To Be A Kind Of Frat House Affair. Bilderberg [philosophy] May Be Marginally More Serious. The Cfr Is Transparent. You Can Read Their Publications. In The 18th Century It Perhaps Made Some Sense To Conjure Up The Illuminati And Masons. Not Since.

Philosophy

House

May

There's A Tremendous Gap Between Public Opinion And Public Policy.

Public Opinion

Gaps

Policy

Isn't It Interesting That Eating A Banana Is Somehow Comical.

Interesting

Bananas

Eating

Efforts Can Succeed Over Time, And Not Trying Ensures That The Worst Will Happen.

Effort

Trying

Succeed

In My Experience At Least, The Large Public Universities Do Not Fall Behind In Fostering Creativity And Independence; Often The Contrary.

Fall

Creativity

Independence

Technology Is Usually Fairly Neutral. It’s Like A Hammer, Which Can Be Used To Build A House Or To Destroy Someone’s Home. The Hammer Doesn’t Care. It Is Almost Always Up To Us To Determine Whether The Technology Is Good Or Bad.

Home

Technology

House

I Am Not Too Happy With Terms Like “the Left”, To Be Honest. And I Don’t Use It Much….if By “the Left” You Mean People Who Are Committed To Peace And Justice And Freedom And So On, There Can’t Be Elements Of The Left Opposed To Workers’ Movement, At Least Under That Definition.

Mean

People

Justice

If You Are Working 50 Hours A Week In A Factory, You Don't Have Time To Read 10 Newspapers A Day And Go Back To Declassified Government Archives. But Such People May Have Far-reaching Insights Into The Way The World Works.

Government

People

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.

2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.

2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.

2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.

3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.

3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.

3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.

4. Proper Usage of Quotes

4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.

4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.

4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).

5. Common Mistakes to Avoid

5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.

5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.

5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.

6. Quotes in Different Contexts

6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.

6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.

6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.

7. Punctuation and Formatting

Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:

Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.

Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.

Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.

8. Ethical Considerations

Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes

Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.

Conclusion

Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.

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