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" I don't want to become a rhetorical speaker. My effectiveness is mastering all of the data and being able to respond. "

Norman Finkelstein

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" No doubt one can, in light of further study and life experience, come to repudiate past convictions. "

Norman Finkelstein

" Everybody wants peace. That's a truism. There is no point in accomplishing through war what you can accomplish through peace. "

Norman Finkelstein

" My original interest in the Nazi holocaust was personal. Both my father and mother were survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. Apart from my parents, every family member on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis. "

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" I don't feel particularly attached to Israel - 'nationalism,' as Noam Chomsky said, 'is not my cup of tea' - but I feel no particular need to demonize it. "

Norman Finkelstein

" I think sometimes we underestimate just how vulnerable Israel is on the public-relations front. That's why they spend so much money on propaganda. And that's why they panic every time they feel like they're losing the propaganda war. "

Norman Finkelstein

" Conversion and zealotry, just like revelation and apostasy, are flip sides of the same coin, the currency of a political culture having more in common with religion than rational discourse. "

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" Why should Americans go on with their lives as normal, worrying about calories and hair loss, while other people are worrying about where they are going to get their next piece of bread? "

Norman Finkelstein

" When I was a young man, my mother said to me, 'You can't be a communist without being a militant atheist.' So I had to be a militant atheist because I wanted to be a communist. "

Norman Finkelstein

" The real goal of politics has to be getting people to act on what they already know was wrong. "

Norman Finkelstein

" I would not have stayed at a university if it told me upfront that a condition for me getting tenure. my views have to be filtered through Catholic values. I would consider it a betrayal of my parents' legacy. "

Norman Finkelstein

" I earn - I'm not - I don't want to claim I'm a scholar of great stature, but I have made a certain reputation for myself, I've published several books, I've never been able to get a permanent teaching job. "

Norman Finkelstein

" I don't claim to know Israel. I don't speak Hebrew; my contacts are pretty limited. But I didn't know Vietnam; I didn't know Nicaragua, El Salvador or Honduras. It doesn't mean you can't reach your conclusions. "

Norman Finkelstein

" Every victory of Hezbollah, I celebrate. "

Norman Finkelstein

" I'm not a good writer, and I don't care. Unfortunately, after I left college, I didn't have time much for literature. I wish I did. Most of the time I read documents, and that's not going to help your writing. But I'm a very logical writer, and you can't get out of me. Once I've nailed you, you're finished. "

Norman Finkelstein

" I voted for Nader, and I have no doubts at all that it was the right thing to do because the Nader candidacy was extremely energising and a terrific phenomenon in American life, and I hope he continues. "

Norman Finkelstein

The Right Thing

" Israel has been a stage on which American Jews have played out their fantasies of toughness - often from Martha's Vineyard. "

Norman Finkelstein

" I'm an old fan of the Negro spirituals. "

Norman Finkelstein

" I no longer say I'm unemployed. I say I'm unemployable. It's different. An unemployed suggests at a certain point in the future, you might be employed. That's not the case with me. I'm unemployable, and unfortunately, that's one of the bits of the web, in particular of Google. "

Norman Finkelstein

" Indeed, the field of Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense if not sheer fraud. "

Norman Finkelstein

" Both my father and mother were survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. Apart from my parents, every family member on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis. "

Norman Finkelstein

" When you are a people's movement, you have one thing. Your only asset is people. And you have to deal with real people. Not the people of your imagination. Not the people you wish people would be. But people as they exist actually out there in the real world. "

Norman Finkelstein

" People are motivated by the desires for privilege, for power, for profit. Those are not shocking revelations. Anyone who's had any experience in life knows these things. "

Norman Finkelstein

" Personal convictions are not politics. Personal convictions, if they become the subject of a group conviction, they become a cult. "

Norman Finkelstein

" I am opposed to any state with an ethnic character, not only to Israel. "

Norman Finkelstein

" The whole purpose of annual reviews is to keep you abreast of whether or not you are fulfilling the requirements of tenure. "

Norman Finkelstein

" The Zionists indeed learnt well from the Nazis. So well that it seems that their morally repugnant treatment of the Palestinians, and their attempts to destroy Palestinian society within Israel and the occupied territories, reveals them as basically Nazis with beards and black hats. "

Norman Finkelstein

" People have the right to defend their country from foreign occupiers, and people have the right to defend their country from invaders who are destroying their country. "

Norman Finkelstein

" I think that people like Bloomberg, they're complete thugs. No question about it. But on the other hand, it must be said that they are politically savvy. They don't get into those positions of power - in the case of Bloomberg, both economic and political power - by being anybody's fool. "

Norman Finkelstein

" I'm politically on the left, no question about it. I oppose sweatshops, I oppose exploitation of labour in the third world. "

Norman Finkelstein

" International law says people fighting for self-determination can use force in order to achieve their independence. "

Norman Finkelstein