Richard A. Falk Quotes

#1. I think the impacts of 9/11 on academic freedom vary greatly depending on locale and time (softening with the passage of time), and even within the same community, and likely within the same schools. This variability makes it difficult to offer generalized responses without accompanying caveats.

Richard A. Falk

#2. Looked at objectively, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths resulting from political violence are produced by what should be understood as "state terror." Terrorism also serves as an excuse to avoid diplomacy and the peaceful resolution of conflict.

Richard A. Falk

#3. What both the state and the capitalist economy oppose is an understanding of what might be called "the true nature of things" (using the phrase without metaphysical pretensions), especially injustices and exploitative practices.

Richard A. Falk

#4. Our [American] leaders are so socialized as to address militarized threats by acting on the basis of a militarized mentality that the deep roots of problems are ignored.

Richard A. Falk

#5. Nothing is more important than restoring a high degree of autonomy to educational experiences so that those who grow up in this society and troubled world have the best available tools to grasp the challenges that imperil our national and human future.

Richard A. Falk

#6. I once got a call from a bank, asking me to compute a mortgage, since their computers were down. This was a very depressing moment.

Richard A. Falk

#7. American special relationships with Israel and Saudi Arabia blind us to their dreadful encroachments on human rights, as well as confer impunity on their leaders with respect to accountability for crimes against humanity.

Richard A. Falk

#8. The central task of our time is to evolve a new system of world order based on principles of peace and justice.

Richard A. Falk

#9. I don't like to end my talk with a 700 million dollar loss, even if it shows the importance of Numerical Analysis.

Richard A. Falk

#10. There is no effort to acknowledge some equivalent accountability by associating "terrorism" with all violence that is deliberately aimed at civilians, either directly or as foreseeable effects of violent acts, whether the actor is a non-state individual or group or the state.

Richard A. Falk

#11. When Daniel Gorenstein was chair, he did mathematics from 5am to 12noon, spending the second half of his working day on administration. When I was chair, I also spent half of my time on research: every other minute.

Richard A. Falk

#12. The British leadership has acknowledged that it only became possible to end the violence in North Ireland when it stopped thinking of the [Irish Republican Army] as "a terrorist organization" and began treating it as a political actor with genuine grievances that deserved to be addressed.

Richard A. Falk

#13. This kind of totalization of security consciousness [after tragedy of 9/11] has the effect within classrooms (and beyond) of constraining the imagination and reinforcing attitudes that privilege the forces of law and order as against the crosscurrents of freedom and dissent.

Richard A. Falk

#14. An aggravating feature of this post-9/11 atmosphere is to cast suspicions on Muslims and on Islam as a religion that is interpreted as either inherently violent or death-oriented, with a particular animus against America and Americans.

Richard A. Falk

#15. When I told my son that I had to give a talk about my work to non-mathematicians, he warned me that regular people don't think like mathematicians.

Richard A. Falk

#16. When I told my mother that I have to give a talk, and was debating what could I possibly say to non-mathematicians, she said: "You got what to wear?".

Richard A. Falk

#17. The Method of Bisection is a sophisticated version of a tool used in fifth grade called "Guess and Check".

Richard A. Falk