Top 30 Norman Finkelstein Quotes

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.

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.

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.

The moment you have massive social and political commentary trying to explain a phenomenon, then you know we are no longer dealing with a strictly psychiatric question.

I don’t think it’s a good thing to have Christian states, Muslim states, or any kind of ethnic states.

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.

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.

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.

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.

People have to liberate themselves, because liberation is not a single act. It’s a question of eternal vigilance. Otherwise, you’ll just become enslaved by someone else.

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.

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

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

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

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

Teaching is in my bones. I love to teach.

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.

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.

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

You know, frankly speaking, money just doesn’t figure largely in my world view.

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

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.

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.

Every victory of Hezbollah, I celebrate.

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.

I had been a Maoist, and then when the Gang of Four was overthrown, I was completely distraught. I was bedridden for three weeks; it was a very painful experience for me. Not only because I had been wrong, but because I felt really embarrassed that I had been lecturing and pontificating with such self-confidence.

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

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.

I was probably unusually close to my parents, so I do what I can now to preserve the integrity of their memory. The Holocaust deserves to be remembered.

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.