Noam Chomsky

Born 7 December 1928

From Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States · Nationality: United States · Writes nonfiction

American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author, and lecturer

Quotes

“Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis.”
Syntactic Structures, Chapter 1
“In summary, it is the diversity of human behavior, its appropriateness to new situations, and man’s capacity to innovate – the creative aspect of language use providing the principal indication of this –that leads Descartes to attribute possession of mind to other humans, since he regards this capacity as beyond the limitations of any imaginable mechanism.”
"Creative aspect of language use"
“A good teacher knows that the best way to help students learn is to allow them to find the truth by themselves. Students don’t learn by a mere transfer of knowledge, consumed through rote memorization and later regurgitated.”
1995–1999, p. 21
“Tough love” is just the right phrase: love for the rich and privileged, tough for everyone else.
1995–1999, p.137
“Of course, everybody says they’re for peace. Hitler was for peace. Everybody is for peace. The question is: “What kind of peace?””
Talk at University of California, Berkeley

Books by Noam Chomsky in order

Books by Noam Chomsky in the order they were published, from Syntactic Structures (1962) to On Palestine (2015).