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There Is A Principle Of Human Affairs That Goes Back Millennia, Which Is That You Don't Look In The Mirror. You Can Trace This Principle Back To The Bible. The Designated Intellectuals Of That Time Are Called Prophets, Which Is A Mistranslation Of A Hebrew Word, But They Were Basically Intellectuals, Giving Geopolitical Analysis, Criticizing The Moral Practice Of Leadership, Etc. Now, These People Were Not Treated Very Nicely. There Were Other Intellectuals Who Were Treated Nicely, Namely Those Who Centuries Later Came To Be Called False Prophets. These Were The Flatterers Of The Court.
-Noam Chomsky
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There Is A Principle

Noam Chomsky
There Is A Principle Of Human Affairs That Goes Back Millennia, Which Is That You Don't Look In The Mirror. You Can Trace This Principle Back To The Bible. The Designated Intellectuals Of That Time Are Called Prophets, Which Is A Mistranslation Of A Hebrew Word, But They Were Basically Intellectuals, Giving Geopolitical Analysis, Criticizing The Moral Practice Of Leadership, Etc. Now, These People Were Not Treated Very Nicely. There Were Other Intellectuals Who Were Treated Nicely, Namely Those Who Centuries Later Came To Be Called False Prophets. These Were The Flatterers Of The Court.
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Mirrors
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There Is A Principle Of Human Affairs That Goes Back Millennia, Which Is That You Don't Look In The Mirror. You Can Trace This Principle Back To The Bible. The Designated Intellectuals Of That Time Are Called Prophets, Which Is A Mistranslation Of A Hebrew Word, But They Were Basically Intellectuals, Giving Geopolitical Analysis, Criticizing The Moral Practice Of Leadership, Etc. Now, These People Were Not Treated Very Nicely. There Were Other Intellectuals Who Were Treated Nicely, Namely Those Who Centuries Later Came To Be Called False Prophets. These Were The Flatterers Of The Court.
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Recognition
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Suffering
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Divinity
Helpful
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Thinking
Suffering
Way
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Giving
Decision
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Thinking
Names
Mit
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Thinking
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Minorities
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Levels
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Different
Workers
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Facts
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Russia
United States
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States
Projects
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Climate
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Democracy
Defense
By A Generative Grammar I Mean Simply A System Of Rules That In Some Explicit And Well-defined Way Assigns Structural Descriptions To Sentences. Obviously, Every Speaker Of A Language Has Mastered And Internalized A Generative Grammar That Expresses His Knowledge Of His Language. This Is Not To Say That He Is Aware Of The Rules Of The Grammar Or Even That He Can Become Aware Of Them, Or That His Statements About His Intuitive Knowledge Of The Language Are Necessarily Accurate.
Mean
Way
Language
Latin America Wants To Decriminalize At Least Marijuana (maybe More Or Course;) The Us Wants To Maintain It. An Interesting Story. There Seems To Me No Easy Way Out Of This.
Latin
Marijuana
America
If We Choose, We Can Live In A World Of Comforting Illusion.
Hero
Comforting
Anarchy
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
It's Not In Doubt That Tobacco Is Far More Lethal Than Hard Drugs.
Drug
Doubt
Tobacco
The Educational System Is Pretty Much Geared To Passing The Next Exam. You're Educated To Pass Tests And Not To Understand.
Educational
Tests
Next
There Are Cases - For Example, The American Revolution. George Washington's Army Lost Just About Every Battle With The British, Who Had A Much Better Army. The War Was Basically Won By Guerrilla Forces That Managed To Undermine The British Occupation.
War
Army
Battle
What I've Called "the Mafia Doctrine" In Many Publications: When The Godfather Issues An Edict, Others Must Obey, Or Else. It's Too Dangerous To Allow Disobedience. A Leading Principle Of World Affairs - Though, Of Course, Officials And Commentators Put It More Politely.
Issues
Mafia
Principles
A Fundamental Element Of Human Nature Is The Need For Creative Work, For Creative Inquiry, For Free Creation Without The Arbitrary Limiting Effects Of Coercive Institutions. A Decent Society Should Maximize The Possibilities For This Fundamental Human Characteristic To Be Realized.
Creative
Needs
Arbitrary
There Is Still Much Debate About Whether Torture Has Been Effective In Eliciting Information - The Assumption Being, Apparently, That If It Is Effective, Then It May Be Justified.
Information
May
Assumption
Markets Are Lethal, If Only Because Of Ignoring Externalities, The Impacts Of Their Transactions On The Environment.
Impact
Environment
Transactions
I Think Individuals Have A Right To Privacy, But That Ought To Include The Right To Prevent Private Institutions From Monitoring What You Do And Building Up A Personal Profile For You So That They Can Direct You In Particular Ways By Their Effective Control Over The Internet, And That Doesn't Happen Of Course.
Thinking
Building Up
Way
There Is Always Room For Gramsci's "optimism Of The Will."
Optimism
Rooms
The Iraq War Is The First War In History, In Which There Were Huge Demonstrations Before The War Was Launched, Not Beginning Five Years Later And Then Being Broken Up. All Of These Are Changes, And The People Who Are Writing In Journals Today Lived Through These Changes.
War
Writing
Years
It Is A Virtual Reflex For Governments To Plead Security Concerns When They Undertake Any Controversial Action, Often As A Pretext For Something Else.
Government
Action
Controversial
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
China Has Been There For 3,000 Years, Has Contempt For The Barbarians, Is Overcoming A Century Of Domination, And Simply Moves On Its Own. It Does Not Get Intimidated When Uncle Sam Shakes His Fist. That's Scary.
Uncles
Moving
Years
A Bombing Was Planned [in Syria], Which Would Probably Make The Situation Worse, But Would At Least Establish Us Credibility.
Credibility
Situation
Syria
You Never Know How [donald Trump] Is Going To React. When He Learned For Example That He'd Lost The Election By About Three Million Votes, His Instant Reaction Was Insanity; You Know, Three To Five Million Illegal Immigrants Somehow Were Organized In Some Incredible Fashion To Vote.
Fashion
Insanity
Example
In The American Jewish Community, There Is Little Willingness To Face The Fact That The Palestinian Arabs Have Suffered A Monstrous Historical Injustice . . . Until This Is Recognized, Discussion Of The Middle East Crisis Cannot Even Begin.
Community
Historical
Middle East
The Educational System In The Us Was A Highly Predictable Victim Of The Neoliberal Reaction, Guided By The Maxim Of "private Affluence And Public Squalor." Funding For Public Education Has Sharply Declined. As Higher Education Is Driven To A Business Model In Accord With Neoliberal Doctrine, Administrative Bureaucracy Has Sharply Increased At The Expense Of Faculty And Students. Cost-cutting Leads To Hyper-exploitation Of The More Vulnerable, Creating A New Precariat Of Graduate Students And Adjuncts Surviving On A Bare Pittance, Replacing Tenured Faculty.
Educational
Students
Graduates
Academics Are Not Necessarily Nice People.
Nice
People
Nice People
Extensive Violations Of Human Rights (torture, Forced Reduction Of Living Standards For Much Of The Population, Police-sponsored Death Squads, Destruction Of Representative Institutions Or Of Independent Unions, Etc.) Are Directly Correlated With Us Government Support. The Linkage Is Not Accidental; Rather It Is Systematic. The Reason Is Obvious Enough. Client Fascism Often Improves The Business Climate For American Corporations, Quite Generally The Guiding Factor In Foreign Policy.
Independent
Violation Of Human Rights
Government
Ug [universal Grammar] May Be Regarded As A Characterization Of The Genetically Determined Language Faculty. One May Think Of Thisfaculty As A 'language Acquisition Device,' An Innate Component Of The Human Mind That Yields A Particular Language Through Interaction With Present Experience, A Device That Converts Experience Into A System Of Knowledge Attained: Knowledge Of One Or Another Language.
Thinking
Yield
Mind
Nafta And Gatt Are Quite Similar. They Both Have Highly Protectionist Elements. They're Kind Of A Mixture Of Liberalization And Protection Designed To Expand The Power Of Transnational Corporations. They're Very Basically Investor's Rights Agreements. One Crucial Part In Both Is The "intellectual Property Right," Which Is A Funny Way Of Saying That Corporations, Like Pharmaceutical Companies, Will Have Near-monopolistic Rule Over Future Technology. This Now Includes Product As Well As Process Rights.
Technology
Rights
Agreement
Education Is A System Of Imposed Ignorance.
Education
Ignorance
Thrive
The Beam In Our Own Eye Is Harder To Detect, Although - Or More Accurately Because - To Detect It, And Remove It, Is Vastly More Important On Elementary Moral Grounds, And Commonly More Important In Terms Of Direct Human Consequences As Well. Intellectuals Have Historically Played A Critical Function In Performing These Tasks, And [ivan] Illich Is Right To Observe That Claims To Scientific Expertise And Special Knowledge Are Often Used As A Device.
Eye
Important
Special
The Search For Truth Is A Cooperative, Unending Endeavor. We Can, And Should, Engage In It To The Extent We Can And Encourage Others To Do So As Well, Seeking To Free Ourselves From Constraints Imposed By Coercive Institutions, Dogma, Irrationality, Excessive Conformity And Lack Of Initiative And Imagination, And Numerous Other Obstacles.
Imagination
Obstacles
Conformity
If You Look At History, Even Recent History, You See That There Is Indeed Progress. . . . Over Time, The Cycle Is Clearly, Generally Upwards. And It Doesn't Happen By Laws Of Nature. And It Doesn't Happen By Social Laws. . . . It Happens As A Result Of Hard Work By Dedicated People Who Are Willing To Look At Problems Honestly, To Look At Them Without Illusions, And To Go To Work Chipping Away At Them, With No Guarantee Of Success — In Fact, With A Need For A Rather High Tolerance For Failure Along The Way, And Plenty Of Disappointments.
Disappointment
Hard Work
Law
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
Chemistry, Until My Childhood, Not That Long Ago, Was Regarded As A Calculating Device. Because You Couldn't Reduce To Physics. So It's Just Some Way Of Calculating The Result Of Experiments. The Bohr Atom Was Treated That Way.
Long Ago
Childhood
Way
Honduras Has Become A Murder Capital Of The World; There's Horrible Atrocities, Infanticide, Murder Of Women Is Way Up, And People Are Fleeing In Desperation. They Come To The Border, And We Put Them In Trucks And Send Them Back To Mexico To Die. And Here People Are Scared Of Illegal Immigrants - That's What We're Doing. It's Pretty Shocking.
People
Atrocities
Fleeing
To Speak Truth To Power Is Not A Particularly Honorable Vocation. One Should Seek Out An Audience That Matters - And Furthermore (another Important Qualification), It Should Not Be Seen As An Audience, But As A Community Of Common Concern In Which One Hopes To Participate Constructively.
Community
Important
Matter
We Can Imagine A Society In Which No One Could Survive As A Social Being Because It Does Not Correspond To Biologically Determined Perceptions And Human Social Needs. For Historical Reasons, Existing Societies Might Have Such Properties, Leading To Various Forms Of Pathology.
Historical
Perception
Society
Humans Have Certain Properties And Characteristics Which Are Intrinsic To Them, Just As Every Other Organism Does. That's Human Nature.
Doe
Human Nature
Characteristics
Our Only Real Hope For Democracy Is That We Get The Money Out Of Politics Entirely And Establish A System Of Publicly Funded Elections.
Real
Democracy
Election
If You Want To End Terrorism Stop Participating In It.
Want
Terrorism
Ends
If There Had Been A Charismatic Figure In The United States Who Could Mobilize Fears, Anger, Racism, A Sense Of Loss Of The Future That Belongs To Us, This Country Could Be In Real Danger. We're Lucky That There Never Has Been An Honest, Charismatic Figure. Mccarthy Was Too Much Of A Thug, You Know? Nixon Was Too Crooked. Trump, I Think, Is Too Much Of A Clown. So, We've Been Lucky.
Country
Real
Loss
The Possibility Of Interpersonal Communication Has Increased Substantially With Contemporary Technology. But As Compared With The Major Changes, Which Were Long Ago, These Are Not Huge.
Communication
Technology
Long Ago
If We Understood, As We Do Not, The Physical Bases For Intellectual Structures, I Have Little Doubt That We Would Find Structures In The Brain For Social Interactions, Or Language, Or Analysis Of Personality - A Whole Variety Of Systems Developed On The Basis Of A Specific Biological Endowment.
Personality
Doubt
Brain
While Trump Keeps The Spotlight On Himself, The "respectable" Republican Establishment Chips Away At Government Programs That Benefit The General Population.
Republican
Program
Respectable
Haiti, Which Has Been The Main Target Of Us Intervention Throughout The 20th Century, Is The Poorest. And Guatemala, Which Is Maybe The Third Major Target Of Us Intervention, Probably Ranks Third Poorest.
Target
Haiti
Guatemala
[health-care System] Is Largely Privatized And Unregulated. So Of Course It's Highly Inefficient And Costly.
Care
Health Care
Courses
I've Often Been Struck By The Extensive Knowledge That People Have Of Sports, And Particularly, Their Self-confidence In Discussing It With Experts. . . . In Contrast, When Discussing Matters Of Concern To Human Lives - Their Own And Others - People Tend To Defer To Experts.
Sports
Self Confidence
People
I Don't Feel That I Have Anything To Say Beyond Moral Truisms.
Moral
Truism
Feels
Small Changes Can Magnifiy. The Possibility Of Interpersonal Communication Has Increased Substantially With Contemporary Technology. But As Compared With The Major Changes, Which Were Long Ago, These Are Not Huge.
Communication
Technology
Long Ago
Democracy, In Any Rational Form, Also Imposes Conditions On Majority Rule. That's What The Bill Of Rights Is About, For Example.
Rights
Majority Rule
Democracy
The Person Who Wins The Nobel Prize Is Not The Person Who Read The Most Journal Articles And Took The Most Notes On Them. It's The Person Who Knew What To Look For. And Cultivating That Capacity To Seek What's Significant, Always Willing To Question Whether You're On The Right Track - That's What Education Is Going To Be About, Whether It's Using Computers And The Internet, Or Pencil And Paper, Or Books.
Book
Winning
Track
For Example, When My Father Was Able To Buy A Secondhand Car In The Late 1930s, And He Took Us To The Countryside For A Weekend, If We Looked For A Motel To Stay In We Had To See If It Said "restricted" On It. "restricted" Meant No Jews.
Father
Weekend
Car
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
In Fact, There Is A Very Close Correlation Between Human Rights Violations And Us Aid, Particularly In Latin America.
Latin
Rights
America
It's Quite Extraordinary To Hear A Supposedly Learned Person Call The United States A Leading Terrorist Nation, One Of The Leading Terrorist Nations In The World. It's False And Very Treacherous Teaching.
Teaching
Learned Person
United States
I Don't Think That Experience Is A Very Useful Or Convincing Attribute For A Sensible Foreign Policy. Henry Kissinger Had A Lot Of Experience.
Thinking
Henry Kissinger
Attributes
I Mean, It’s True, Nobody Talks About Them, But When You Bring It Up, The Idea That You Have To Rent Yourself To Somebody And Follow Their Orders, And That They Own And You Work There, And You Built It But You Don’t Own It, That’s A Highly Unnatural Notion. You Don’t Have To Study Any Complicated Theories To See That This Is An Attack On Human Dignity.
Respect
Work
Mean
The Manufacturing Industry Is Starting To Press For Some Kind Of National Healthcare. Now It's Beginning To Put It On The Agenda. It Doesn't Matter If The Population Wants It. What 90% Of The Population Wants Would Be Kind Of Irrelevant. But If Part Of The Concentration Of Corporate Capital That Basically Runs The Country - Another Thing We're Not Allowed To Say But It's Obvious - If Part Of That Sector Becomes In Favor Then The Issue Moves Onto The Political Agenda.
Running
Country
Moving
... The Media Serve The Interests Of State And Corporate Power, Which Are Closely Interlinked, Framing Their Reporting And Analysis In A Manner Supportive Of Established Privilege And Limiting Debate And Discussion Accordingly.
Media
Supportive
Analysis
The More There Is A Need To Talk About The Ideals Of Democracy, The Less Democratic The System Usually Is.
Democracy
Needs
Democratic
We Have To Be A Little Cautious About Not Trying To Kill A Gnat With An Atom Bomb. The Performances Are So Utterly Absurd Regarding The "post-truth" Moment That The Proper Response Might Best Be Ridicule.
Trying
Moments
Absurd
When I Am At Home, I Never Watch Tv, But When I Am Abroad In A Hotel I Take A Look At The Bbc To Find Out What's Going On.
Home
Watches
Looks
As Long As Individuals Are Compelled To Rent Themselves On The Market To Those Who Are Willing To Hire Them, As Long As Their Role In Production Is Simply That Of Ancillary Tools, Then There Are Striking Elements Of Coercion And Oppression That Make Talk Of Democracy Very Limited, If Even Meaningful.
Meaningful
Long
Democracy
Moral Cowardice And Intellectual Corruption Are The Natural Concomitants Of Unchallenged Privilege.
Intellectual
Privilege
Moral
In The Sciences Particularly The Large Public Universities Must And Do Take An Active Role In Fostering Creativity And Independence; Otherwise The Fields Will Wither, And Along With Them Even The Aspirations Of Wealth And Power.
Creativity
Independence
Fields
Latin America Has Much Richer Resources. You'd Expect It To Be Far More Advanced Than East Asia, But It Had The Disadvantage Of Being Under Imperialist Wings.
Latin
Wings
America
The Drones Are A Terrorist Weapon, They Not Only Kill Targets But Also Terrorise Other People.
People
Drones
Target
Some May Remember, If You Have Good Memories, That There Used To Be A Concept In Anglo-american Law Called A Presumption Of Innocence, Innocent Until Proven Guilty In A Court Of Law. Now That's So Deep In History That There's No Point Even Bringing It Up, But It Did Once Exist.
Memories
Law
Presumption Of Innocence
The Respected Intellectuals Are Those Who Conform And Serve Power Interests.
Interest
Conform
I Do Not See How We Can Rationally Oppose High Speed Rail Because Of The Environmental And Other Costs Without Considering The Social And Human Consequences Of The Radical Elimination Of Transportation That This Entails.
Environmental
Cost
Speed
Of Course All Such Conclusions About Appropriate Actions Against The Rich And Powerful Are Based On A Fundamental Flaw: This Is Us, And That Is Them. This Crucial Principle, Deeply Embedded In Western Culture, Suffices To Undermine Even The Most Precise Analogy And The Most Impeccable Reasoning.
Powerful
Principles
Western Culture
It's Perfectly Obvious That There Is Some Genetic Factor That Distinguishes Humans From Other Animals And That It Is Language-specific. The Theory Of That Genetic Component, Whatever It Turns Out To Be, Is What Is Called Universal Grammar.
Animal
Language
Theory
The More Privilege You Have, The More Opportunity You Have. The More Opportunity You Have, The More Responsibility You Have.
Responsibility
Opportunity
Privilege
The Tendencies Are Considerably Weaker In The Natural Sciences, Which, For The Past Several Centuries, Have Survived And Flourished Through Such Constant Challenge, And Therefore, At Best, Seek To Encourage It. Serving The Status Quo In Political And Socioeconomic Realms Is A Different Matter.
Past
Political
Challenges
I Don't Use The Social Media But I Can See The Effects In My Own Correspondence. I Get A Ton Of Correspondence. It Used To Be Hard Copy And Now It's A Very Limited Amount Of Actual Letters People Write. So It's Mostly Email.
Writing
Media
People
Any Incident Could Instantly Blow Up. Both Sides [usa And Russia] Are Modernizing And Increasing Their Military Systems, Including Nuclear Systems.
Military
Blow
Russia
There's An Interesting Book Called The Fugu Plan, Written By Marvin Tokayer And Mary Swartz, Which Describes The Circumstances When European Jews Came To Japan, A Semi-feudal Society.
Book
Japan
Interesting
In Fact, For The Majority Of The Population, Wages And Incomes Have Stagnated And Conditions Have Gotten Worse. So They Are Asking, "what Did I Do Wrong?" And The Answer That The Talk Show Host Is Giving Them Is Convincing, In It's Internal Logic. It's Saying, "what's Wrong Is The Rich Liberals Own Everything, Run Everything, They Don't Care About You; Therefore, Distrust Them" And So On.
Running
Giving
Majority
Anarchists Try To Identify Power Structures. They Urge Those Exercising Power To Justify Themselves. This Justification Does Not Succeed Most Of The Time.
Exercise
Trying
Doe
There Are Many Terrorist States In The World, But The United States Is Unusual In That It Is Officially Committed To International Terrorism.
Peace
War
United States
The Irish Were Treated Horribly, Even Here In Boston. For Example, In The Late Nineteenth Century They Were Treated Pretty Much Like African Americans. You Could Find Signs Here In Boston In The Restaurants Saying "no Dogs And Irish."
Dog
Boston
African American
If You Look At The Associated Press Wires, There's A Constant Flow Of Information Coming In. At That Time I Happened To Have Direct Access To Ap Wires. The Day The Marines Landed In Haiti And Restored [ Jan Bètran] Aristide There Was A Lot Of Excitement About The Dedication To Democracy And So On. But The Day Before The Marines Landed, When Every Journalist Was Looking At Haiti Because It Was Assumed That Something Big Was Happening, The Ap Wires Reported That Then [bill] Clinton Administration Had Authorized Texaco To Ship Oil Illegally To The Military Junta.
Military
Marine
Dedication
Today's Democrats Are Pretty Much What Used To Be Called Moderate Republicans A Generation Ago.
Generations
Today
Republican
Some Kind Of Settlement In Kashmir Is Crucial For Both Countries [pakistan And India]. It's Also Tearing India Apart With Horrible Atrocities In The Region Which Is Controlled By Indian Armed Forces.
Country
India
Atrocities
Latin America Is Now Exploring New And Often Promising Paths In Rejecting The Doctrinal Notions Of "globalization," And Also In The Remarkable Growth Of Popular Movements And Authentic Participation In The Political Systems. How Successful This Will Be Is More A Matter For Action Than For Speculation.
Latin
Successful
Political
I Think There Is A Good Reason Why The Propaganda System Works That Way. It Recognizes That The Public Will Not Support The Actual Policies. Therefore It Is Important To Prevent Any Knowledge Or Understanding Of Them.
Thinking
Support
Understanding
Welsh Is Now Almost A National Language In Wales. The Scottish Dialects Are Reviving To Some Extent. I Don't Think It's A Major Thing, But It's There, And It's Happening Elsewhere.
Thinking
Dialect
Language
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

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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