Biografia

His 1957 work "Syntactic Structures" revolutionized the field of linguistics, fundamentally changing the current understanding of language and mind.

Has written a number of books highly critical of the military-industrial complex and political corruption.

Caused a major controversy when an article he'd written in defense of free speech was used as a preface for a book by Robert Faurisson, a French professor whose works have focused on his belief that the Holocaust was a hoax. Chomsky's support of Faurisson's right to freedom of speech, defense of the credibility of Faurrison's research and his repeated criticisms of Israel have led to accusations of anti-Semitism, which he denies, pointing out that he himself is Jewish.

At the age of ten, he wrote his first political article on the fight against fascism in Spain.

Joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (now the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy). From 1966 to 1976 he held the Ferrari P. Ward Professorship of Modern Languages and Linguistics, and in 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor. As of 2008, Chomsky has taught at MIT continuously for 53 years.

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants, and aliens, the more you control all the people.

For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of "brainwashing under freedom" to which we are subjected and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting instruments.

The country was founded on the principle that the primary role of government is to protect property from the majority. And so it remains.

[on dealing with Holocaust deniers] Going back years, I am absolutely certain that I've taken far more extreme postitions on people who deny the Holocaust than you have. For example, you go back to my earliest articles and you will find that I say that even to enter into the arena of debate on the question of whether the Nazis carried out such atrocities is already to lose one's humanity. So I don't even think you ought to discuss the issue if you want my opinion. But if anybody wants to refute Faurisson [denier Robert Faurisson'] there's certainly no difficulty in doing so.

[from Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992)] I do not think that the State ought to have the right to determine historical truths and to punish people who deviate from them. I'm not willing to give the State that right. I'm saying if you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don't like. I mean, Goebbels [Joseph Goebbels] was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked. So was Stalin [Joseph Stalin]. If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise. Otherwise you're not in favor of freedom of speech.