
(1979, Jerusalem) [Defending the 'Ancient Dream of Freedom', Paul, Wolfowitz, November 18, 2002, Jinsa.org, http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articles.html/function/view/categoryid/1366/documentid/1839/history/3,2359,2166,1366,1839]
Source: The Society of the Spectacle
(1979, Jerusalem) [Defending the 'Ancient Dream of Freedom', Paul, Wolfowitz, November 18, 2002, Jinsa.org, http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articles.html/function/view/categoryid/1366/documentid/1839/history/3,2359,2166,1366,1839]
“State terror is almost always much more extreme than retail terror, and this is no exception.”
Interview by Tony Jones on Lateline, April 8, 2002 http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20020408.htm.
Quotes 2000s, 2002
Context: [Q: do you think the Palestinian suicide bombers are freedom fighters or terrorists? ] They're terrorists - they're both, actually. They're trying to fight for freedom, but doing it in a totally unacceptable immoral way. Of course they're terrorists. And there's been Palestinian terrorism all the way through. I have always opposed it, I oppose it now. But it's very small as compared with the US-backed Israeli terrorism. Quite typically, violence reflects the means of violence. It's not unusual. State terror is almost always much more extreme than retail terror, and this is no exception.
“For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things that children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. This terror, therefore, and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of daylight, but by the aspect and law of nature.”
Nam veluti pueri trepidant atque omnia caecis
in tenebris metuunt, sic nos in luce timemus
interdum, nilo quae sunt metuenda magis quam
quae pueri in tenebris pavitant finguntque futura.
hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessest
non radii solis neque lucida tela diei
discutiant sed naturae species ratioque.
Book II, lines 55–61 (tr. Rouse)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
“But it's very small as compared with the US-backed Israeli terrorism.”
Interview by Tony Jones on Lateline, April 8, 2002 http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20020408.htm.
Quotes 2000s, 2002
Context: [Q: do you think the Palestinian suicide bombers are freedom fighters or terrorists? ] They're terrorists - they're both, actually. They're trying to fight for freedom, but doing it in a totally unacceptable immoral way. Of course they're terrorists. And there's been Palestinian terrorism all the way through. I have always opposed it, I oppose it now. But it's very small as compared with the US-backed Israeli terrorism. Quite typically, violence reflects the means of violence. It's not unusual. State terror is almost always much more extreme than retail terror, and this is no exception.
“There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.”
Salon interview (1997)
Context: All political movements are like this — we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.
Talk titled "American Foreign Policy" at Harvard University, March 19, 1985; Republished at chomsky.info/talks http://www.chomsky.info/talks/19850319.htm, accessed May 23, 2014.
Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s
“Terrorism is not justified with anything, but it’s explained with everything.”
Hiedra (March 2015) https://issuu.com/revistahiedra/docs/hiedra_issuu/53
Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)