A Quote by Noam Chomsky

But, that’s the whole point of corporatization - to try to remove the public from making decisions over their own fate, to limit the public arena, to control opinion, to make sure that the fundamental decisions that determine how the world is going to be run - which includes production, commerce, distribution, thought, social policy, foreign policy, everything - are not in the hands of the public, but rather in the hands of highly concentrated private power. In effect, tyranny unaccountable to the public.

Noam Chomsky

Quote Topics

Arena Commerce Concentrated Control Decisions Determine Distribution Effect Everything Fate Foreign Foreign Policy Fundamental Going Hands Highly How Limit Make Making Making Decisions Opinion Over Own Point Policy Power Private Production Public Rather Remove Run Social Social Policy Sure Thought Try Tyranny Which Whole World

Quote Author

Noam Chomsky
American - Activist
Born: December 7, 1928

The people have only a very vague direct power. They have the power of voting against the administration, again after its decisions have been taken; but they have no way of getting into the question of policy-making, decision-making, except insofar as the vague forces and pressures of public debate and public opinion have their impact on the President. The President still has to decide. He can't go to the people and ask them to decide for him; he has to make the decision. In that sense he was condemned to be a dictator.

Walter Millis

We've seen in terms of the reaction to some proposals in the Budget already how resistant that public opinion is to, first of all, a public comprehension of the new paradigm in which we have to operate; and secondly, to the rationale for the decisions that we're taking and the reason for those decisions to be implemented and followed through.

Brian Cowen

To attach full confidence to an institution of this nature, it appears to be an essential ingredient in its structure, that it shall be under private and not a public direction-under the guidance of individual interest, not of public policy; which, would be . . . liable to being too much influenced by public necessity.

Alexander Hamilton

The process for producing public policy in Congress is flawed. The process itself kills policy ideas through the bypassing of the rules and procedural decisions that limit discussion.

Dan Webster

There's no question that public opinion is changing, and if you're a person of the left, your goal is presumably to try to mobilize public opinion to affect elite policy; and I think now there are unusual, unprecedented opportunities to do so.

Norman Finkelstein

Private opinion creates public opinion. Public opinion overflows eventually into national behavior as things are arranged at present, can make or mar the world. That is why private opinion, and private behavior, and private conversation are so terrifyingly important.

Jan Struther

Because America is a democracy, public support for presidential foreign-policy decisions is essential.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude.

Calvin Coolidge

A society - any society - is defined as a set of mutual benefits and duties embodied most visibly in public institutions: public schools, public libraries, public transportation, public hospitals, public parks, public museums, public recreation, public universities, and so on.

Robert Reich

There are many issues, as everyone knows, in the United States on which public opinion leans very much to the left of elite policy, but that's because public opinion hasn't been turned into a political force.

Norman Finkelstein

I believe the role that people like myself have played in the transformation of public opinion has been by persistently presenting a different point of view, a point of view which stresses the importance of private markets, of individual freedom, and the distorting effect of governmental policy.

Milton Friedman

Good law includes a commitment to transparency and an insistence that no person or entity with a conflict of interest should have influence on public policy decisions.

Paul Romer

The best way to alleviate the obesity "public health" crisis is to remove obesity from the realm of public health. It doesn't belong there. It's difficult to think of anything more private and of less public concern than what we choose to put into our bodies. It only becomes a public matter when we force the public to pay for the consequences of those choices.

Radley Balko

Welsh rugby has done its dirty washing in public. It's nothing new. We're a tribal bunch. If warring parties want to sway public opinion, they do it in the public arena.

Alun Wyn Jones

We are doing everything we can to protect the food supply. And I can tell you that we're making decisions based upon sound science and good public policy, given the circumstances that we are now in.