A Quote by Noam Chomsky

If commissars in Soviet Russia agreed to subordinate themselves to state power, they could at least plead fear in extenuation. Their counterparts in more free and open societies can plead only cowardice.

Noam Chomsky

Quote Topics

Agreed Could Counterparts Cowardice Fear Free Least More Only Open Plead Power Russia Societies Soviet Soviet Russia State Subordinate Themselves

Quote Author

Noam Chomsky
American - Activist
Born: December 7, 1928

[Isaiah] Berlin's observation is accurate enough, and applies at home as well, and even more harshly for the reasons already mentioned: the apparatchiks and commissars could at least plead fear in extenuation.

Noam Chomsky

Doth Jesus Christ stand up to plead for us with God, to plead with him for us against the devil? Let this teach us to stand up to plead for him before men, to plead for him against the enemies of his person and gospel.

John Bunyan

When you think of power, you think the state has power. When you look at it in terms of revolution, in terms of the state, you think of it in terms of Russia, the Soviet Union, and how those who struggled for power actually became victims of the state, prisoners of the state, and how that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. We have to think of revolution much more in terms of transitions from one epoch to another. Talk about Paleolithic and Neolithic.

Grace Lee Boggs

O Lord, I cannot plead my love of Thee: I plead Thy love of me: - the shallow conduit hails the unfathomed sea.

Christina Rossetti

With all my heart, I plead with the Latter-day Saints to live honestly with the Lord in the payment of tithes and offerings. I plead with youth to establish this habit while you are still young and to resolve to continue with it all the days of your lives.

Gordon B. Hinckley

25 million of Russian people suddenly turned out to be outside the borders of the Russian Federation. They used to live in one state; the Soviet Union has traditionally been called Russia, the Soviet Russia, and it was the great Russia. Then the Soviet Union suddenly fell apart, in fact, overnight, and it turned out that in the former Soviet Union republics there were 25 million Russians. They used to live in one country and suddenly found themselves abroad. Can you imagine how many problems came out?

Vladimir Putin

There are some things in this establishment that are fundamental... about which I shall deal plainly with you... the government by a single person and a parliament is a fundamental... and... though I may seem to plead for myself, yet I do not: no, nor can any reasonable man say it... I plead for this nation, and all the honest men therein.

Oliver Cromwell

The one way, possibly, out of this is for [Bashar] Assad to abdicate and plead, perhaps to Russia or somewhere else. Would save another wave of civilian casualties if we could get him to abdicate.

Rand Paul

Like how could you do nothing, and say, 'I'm doing my best.' How could you take almost everything, and then come back for the rest? How could you beg me to stay, reach out your hands and plead, and then pack up your eyes and run away as soon as I agreed?

Ani DiFranco

I tell myself I use art to promote dissent, but maybe I am just using dissent to promote my art. I plead not guilty to selling out. But I plead it from a bigger house than I used to live in.

Banksy

Our ministry is debt free and we have not had to beg or plead for finances.

David Wilkerson

Unlike a state, a writer cannot plead the historical necessity of his actions.

Joseph Brodsky

If my jeans could talk, they'd plead for mercy.

Phyllis Diller

There is nothing perhaps so generally consoling to a man as a well-established grievance; a feeling of having been injured, on which his mind can brood from hour to hour, allowing him to plead his own cause in his own court, within his own heart, and always to plead it successfully.