"The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.“

-Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky quote about history: "The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such instit..."

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"I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me."

-Noam Chomsky

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"Concentration of executive power, unless it's very temporary and for specific circumstances, let's say fighting world war two, it's an assault on democracy."

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"There are two problems for our species' survival - nuclear war and environmental catastrophe - and we're hurtling towards them. Knowingly."

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"We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won't be a world - at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others."

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"Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism."

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"If you are working 50 hours a week in a factory, you don't have time to read 10 newspapers a day and go back to declassified government archives. But such people may have far-reaching insights into the way the world works."

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"Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers."

-Carlos Fuentes

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"If I had been elected president in 1948, history would be vastly different. I believe we would have stemmed the growth of Big Government, which had begun with the New Deal and culminated with the Great Society."

-Strom Thurmond

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"For most of our history, Americans enjoyed both liberty and security from foreign threats."

-Harry Browne

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"There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history. It is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations."

-Claude Vorilhon

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"This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime, who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning, forced marriage of underage girls and flogging for not wearing the veil? Do such practices represent Iran's ancient history and culture, its ethnic and religious diversity? Its centuries of sensual and subversive poetry?"

-Azar Nafisi

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"What would be the nicest thing I could say about Newt Gingrich? He may be one of the great supporters of the humanities, because you have people who don't want to study the social sciences, because it's not profitable, and now Newt, as the highest-paid historian in American history, may be an encouragement to people to study history."

-Barney Frank

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