# Quote — Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power

> Well, law is a bit like a printing press—it’s kind of neutral, you can make it do anything. I mean, what lawyers are taught in law school is chicanery: how to convert words on paper into instruments of power. And depending where the power is, the law will mean different things.

- Author: [Noam Chomsky](https://www.leafyquotes.com/noam-chomsky.md)
- Book: [Understanding Power](https://www.leafyquotes.com/noam-chomsky/understanding-power.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Understanding_Power#Quotes) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/noam-chomsky/understanding-power/well-law-is-a-bit

## More from this book

> The real lesson of Nixon's fall is that the President shouldn't call Thomas Watson and McGeorge Bundy bad names—that means the Republic's collapsing. And the press prides itself on having exposed this fact. On the other hand, if you want to send the FBI to organize the assassination of a Black Panther leader, that's fine by us; it's fine by the Washington Post too.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/noam-chomsky/understanding-power/the-real-lesson.md)

> See, the "science" [of political economy] happens to be a very flexible one: you can change it to do whatever you feel like, it's that kind of "science."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/noam-chomsky/understanding-power/see-the-science.md)

> … there are no two points of view more antithetical than classical liberalism and capitalism—and that's why when the University of Chicago publishes a bicentennial edition of Smith, they have to distort the text (which they did): because as a true classical liberal, Smith was strongly opposed to all of the idiocy they now sprout in his name.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/noam-chomsky/understanding-power/there-are-no-two.md)