Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

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

Norman Finkelstein

Want

Being

Data

" I don't want to pretend to be a prophet or a saint. I'm very conscious of my limitations. I know my flaws. But I don't like lying. "

" The Holocaust only emerged in American life after Israel's victory in the 1967 Six Day war against its Arab neighbours. "

" 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. "

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

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

Norman Finkelstein

Fan

Old

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

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" DePaul's plot to deny me tenure had nothing to do with my faults. In fact, and ironically, it viciously attacked me and destroyed my career because of my virtues. Which, although few in number, they still found threatening. "

Norman Finkelstein

Plot

Nothing

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There is no way a non-Jew could say what I did in 'The Holocaust Industry' without being labelled a Holocaust denier. I am labelled a Holocaust denier, too. "

" I was bashing Israel in the past because nobody else was exposing its true record. Many people are doing it now, so I switched hats from a critic of Israel to a diplomat who wants to resolve the conflict. I have not changed, but I think the spectrum has moved. "

" My books don't sell anymore. There are many reasons why they don't sell, but one of the reasons is because people don't read anymore. Forget about reading books of detail - they don't read at all. "

" 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. "

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

" My parents often wondered why I would grow so indignant at the falsification and exploitation of the Nazi genocide. The most obvious answer is that it has been used to justify criminal policies of the Israeli state and U.S. support for these policies. "

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

" I think one of the problems when we discuss the Israel-Palestine conflict is people talk too much in terms of, 'What's your preference?,' like politics is a Chinese menu - I'll take one from column A and two from column B. That's not what politics is about. "

" If there were an Oscar for best theatrical performance by a country, Israel would win every year. It's a country based on theater. It's a lunatic state - completely insane. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Israel's pro-American orientation exists not just among Israeli elites but also among the whole population. Come what may in Israel, it's inconceivable that this fundamental orientation will change. Combined with its overwhelming military power, this makes Israel a unique and irreplaceable American asset in the Middle East. "