If you are working 50 hours a week in a factory, you don't have

The words of Noam Chomsky flow with quiet power and deep compassion: “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.” In this reflection lies a truth both humbling and profound—that wisdom does not belong only to the educated, nor does understanding arise solely from privilege. Chomsky reminds us that insight, the truest kind, is not measured by how much one has read, but by how deeply one has lived.

This quote was born from Chomsky’s lifelong defense of ordinary people—the workers, the farmers, the silent builders of the world—whose lives are shaped by forces they rarely have time to study, yet whose instincts often see through the illusions of power. A scholar of linguistics and politics, Chomsky spent his life exposing the structures of control that shape public thought—the propaganda of the powerful, the deceit of media, the machinery of governments. But even as he analyzed systems of oppression, he never despised the common man. Instead, he saw in the worker’s weary hands a different kind of intelligence: the wisdom of reality, learned not from books but from the harsh school of survival.

In the style of the ancients, let us say that Chomsky speaks of two kinds of knowledge: the knowledge of intellect and the knowledge of experience. The first comes from study, the second from toil. The philosopher may read of hunger, but the laborer feels it in his bones. The historian may write of injustice, but the worker lives beneath its weight. And while the scholar deciphers the machinery of power, the worker, through sweat and struggle, feels its gears grinding against his life. It is from this closeness to hardship that insight often arises—not polished or precise, but raw and real, forged like iron in the fires of necessity.

Consider the story of the Industrial Revolution, when millions labored in factories from dawn till dusk, their hands blackened with coal and oil. Few could read, fewer still could write—but their understanding of the world’s cruelty and imbalance led them to form unions, demand rights, and reshape the destiny of nations. It was not the scholars who first declared that labor should have dignity—it was the workers themselves, those who could not afford time for books or archives, yet saw clearly that man was not made to be a cog in another’s profit. From such humble wisdom rose the great reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, built not on intellectual theory but on the moral vision of the oppressed.

Chomsky’s words, then, are a call to humility for the educated and a call to honor for the common man. In every society, there are those who believe that intelligence belongs only to those with degrees or credentials. But the ancient philosophers would rebuke such arrogance. Socrates himself taught in the marketplace, among craftsmen and stonemasons. He believed that truth could emerge from dialogue with anyone, for the light of reason shines in every human soul. In this same spirit, Chomsky reminds us that a worker who has seen the cruelty of the system may understand power more deeply than the academic who studies it from afar.

And yet, his words are also a quiet condemnation of the world’s imbalance—a system that leaves people too exhausted to seek the full truth of their own condition. A man who labors fifty hours a week may see injustice, but he has little time to uncover its roots. His insight is sharpened by life, yet trapped by circumstance. Thus, Chomsky calls upon those who have the time, the education, and the privilege to learn—not to look down upon the worker, but to listen to him, and to use their knowledge in service of justice. For understanding that is not shared becomes vanity; wisdom that does not empower becomes betrayal.

So, my children of the future, learn this sacred balance: never confuse literacy with wisdom, nor knowledge with virtue. The worker’s experience and the scholar’s study are two halves of one truth, each incomplete without the other. The world needs both—the clarity of thought and the clarity of struggle. Therefore, seek out the voices of those who labor, those who build, those who endure. Their words may lack polish, but they carry the rhythm of reality.

And remember this final teaching: the measure of intellect is not how much one knows, but how much one understands the human condition. The man who spends his days at the forge may know more of justice than the man who debates it from comfort. Honor that insight. Listen to it. Let knowledge serve experience, and let experience guide knowledge. For when these two walk hand in hand—when the scholar’s mind and the worker’s heart unite—the world begins to see itself clearly at last, and the path to justice opens before all.