A Quote by Noam Chomsky

I pretend no originality in observing that mass education was motivated in part by the perceived need to "educate them to keep them from our throats," to borrow Ralph Waldo Emerson's parody of elite fears that inspired early advocates of public mass education.

Noam Chomsky

Quote Topics

Borrow Early Educate Education Elite Fears Inspired Keep Mass Motivated Need Observing Originality Our Parody Part Perceived Pretend Public Ralph Ralph Waldo Them Waldo Emerson

Quote Author

Noam Chomsky
American - Activist
Born: December 7, 1928

The Second Wave Society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. You combine those things with standardization, centralization, concentration, and synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy.

Alvin Toffler

Millions of people are getting the vote, and we have to educate them to keep them from our throats. In other words, we have to train them in obedience and servility, so they're not going to think through the way the world works and come after our throats.

Noam Chomsky

To pine for the days before public education became a practical reality is to pine for an America held back by mass ignorance and mass illiteracy.

Timothy Noah

Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Hunger is a weapon of mass destruction. Poor health care is a weapon of mass destruction. Poor education is a weapon of mass destruction. Discrimination is a weapon of mass destruction. Let us abolish such weapons of mass destruction here at home.

Dennis Kucinich

And say, finally, whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government or information to the people. This last is the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

Thomas Jefferson

Education should foster; this education is meant to repress. Education should inspire; this education is meant to tame. Education should harden; this education is meant to enervate. The English are too wise a people to attempt to educate the Irish in any worthy sense. As well expect them to arm us.

Patrick Pearse

Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough for literature. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

You have to simplify - there is no other way to reach a mass audience. And you have to feed them evidence of their own success to keep them motivated.

Rebecca Hamilton

Ralph Waldo Emerson would definitely be my homeboy.

Rainn Wilson

To all of which is added a selection from the elementary schools of subjects of the most promising genius, whose parents are too poor to give them further education, to be carried at the public expense through the college and university. The object is to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country, for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind, which, in proportion to our population, shall be double or treble of what it is in most countries.

Thomas Jefferson

The ancestor of every action is a thought. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

David Allen

The landscape belongs to the person who looks at it..." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

And when it comes to developing the high standards we need, it's time to stop working against our teachers and start working with them. Teachers don't go in to education to get rich. They don't go in to education because they don't believe in their children. They want their children to succeed, but we've got to give them the tools. Invest in early childhood education. Invest in our teachers and our children will succeed.

Barack Obama

Female education ... has occupied my attention so far only as the education of my own daughters ... I thought it essential to give them a solid education which might enable them, when become mothers, to educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their fathers be.

Thomas Jefferson

He had gone to the higher Sierras... [about Ralph Waldo Emerson's death]