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Why did Noam Chomsky travel alone to New York City as a teenager?
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Noam Chomsky
American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky, 2010.
Starting at age 13, Noam Chomsky began traveling alone to New York City primarily to find books for his voracious reading habit and to connect with a thriving working-class Jewish intellectual community. These experiences and the discussions he engaged in during these trips helped confirm the political beliefs that would shape his life, including his views on the importance of free, cooperative activity and the necessity of rational justification for authority.1