Very Different Lessons

It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil.  The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them.

These are, unfortunately, leading themes of history.

-- Noam Chomsky (7 December 1928 -), American linguist, cognitive scientist, political analyst, and human rights activist, Talk titled "The World After September 11th", AFSC Conference at Tufts University, Massachusetts, (8 December 2001)

[Previously Trvth'ed on 3 May 2007, but these are, after all, leading themes.]