Top 84 Finkelstein Quotes
#1. Later, I collaborated with a number of wonderful co-authors, all of whom are friends as well: Stan Finkelstein,
Eric Von Hippel
#3. The real goal of politics has to be getting people to act on what they already know was wrong.
Norman Finkelstein
#4. 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
#5. The study suggests that weight problems could cancel out life-extending benefits of medical advances in the coming decades.
Eric A. Finkelstein
#6. They've (Israel) lost the battle for public opinion. They claim it's because American Jews know too little.. I claim it's because they know too much about the conflict, and young liberal Jews have difficulty defending the use of cluster bombs in Lebanon or supporting the Israeli settlements.
Norman Finkelstein
#7. The Holocaust only emerged in American life after Israel's victory in the 1967 Six Day war against its Arab neighbours.
Norman Finkelstein
#8. War is not a means to an end, it is the end, whereas politics is merely the hiatus between wars.
Norman Finkelstein
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. 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.
Norman Finkelstein
#12. 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.
Norman G. Finkelstein
#13. 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
#14. September 11 was a godsend for Israel. It could now conjoin its merciless persecution of the Palestinians with Bush's War against Terror. But my impression is that it wasn't altogether successful.
Norman Finkelstein
#15. The Holocaust industry has always been bankrupt. What remains is to openly declare it so. The time is long past to put it out of business.
Norman Finkelstein
#16. I feel very strongly that it is vital for us to constantly keep in mind the fact that the Jewish problem is but a phase of the world problem.
Louis Finkelstein
#17. 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
#18. I am opposed to any state with an ethnic character, not only to Israel.
Norman Finkelstein
#19. Israel has been a stage on which American Jews have played out their fantasies of toughness - often from Martha's Vineyard.
Norman Finkelstein
#20. Everybody wants peace. That's a truism. There is no point in accomplishing through war what you can accomplish through peace.
Norman Finkelstein
#21. Judging by opinion polls, Israel has bigger problems than me. It is among the most hated countries on the planet. It should stop acting like a lunatic state. Once it carries on like a normal country, I will be happily redirect my energies elsewhere.
Norman Finkelstein
#22. The statistics John Wesson has compiled in The Science of Soccer show that Premiership football players are vastly more likely to have been born in the first half of the school year. These were the biggest boys in the class and were thus selected for the school team. How fair is that?
Daniel Finkelstein
#23. 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.
Norman Finkelstein
#24. Goldstone has done terrible damage to the cause of truth and justice and the rule of law. He has poisoned Jewish-Palestinian relations, undermined the courageous work of Israeli dissenters and-most unforgivably-increased the risk of another merciless IDF assault.
Norman Finkelstein
#25. 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.
Norman Finkelstein
#26. An invaluable little book ... What Makes a Terrorist uses standard tools of economics and statistical analysis to get at the truth about terrorism ... Krueger finds one familiar fact in all his numbers. Countries with fewer civil liberties tend to produce more terrorists.
Daniel Finkelstein
#27. Quantum theory was split up into dialects. Different people describe the same experiences in remarkably different languages. This is confusing even to physicists.
David Finkelstein
#28. A sure sign of ineptitude and malice is manifested when one's attacker is willing to cover himself with mud in order to try and make some of it adhere to his target.
Christopher Hitchens
#29. The mother of three notoriously unruly youngsters was asked whether or not she'd have children if she had it to do over again. 'Yes', she replied 'but not the same ones.'
David Finkelstein
#30. It's utterly hypocritical for Israelis to wonder aloud why Palestinians don't pursue a non-violent strategy. One obvious reason is that, whenever they have, Israel brutally represses it.
Norman Finkelstein
#31. The road to success, and by that I mean ... the possibility of giving the best one has to the cause that one loves most, is not easy.
Louis Finkelstein
#32. I don't think it's a good thing to have Christian states, Muslim states, or any kind of ethnic states.
Norman Finkelstein
#33. 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
#34. 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.
Norman Finkelstein
#35. It is a grave matter to enter a war, without adequate military preparation; it may prove fatal to come into peace, without moral and religious preparation.
Louis Finkelstein
#36. 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
#37. In taking action we must remember that the things which are happening to the Jews today are but a part of the general disintegration anticipated by philosophers and historians of different schools for almost half a century.
Louis Finkelstein
#38. I hope to devote all of my spare time, which ordinarily would go to research, my summers, and every ounce of strength I can muster to further the project.
Louis Finkelstein
#39. For as Jews, the problem happens to be more urgent and vital than for others; because the destruction of religion on America will involve the destruction also of the religious training of freedom; and with that our civil liberties.
Louis Finkelstein
#40. Indeed, the field of Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense if not sheer fraud.
Norman Finkelstein
#41. [A]n important new book ... Professor Akerlof and Rachel Kranton have invented Identity Economics.
Daniel Finkelstein
#42. Each of the various tactics that have been tried to get Israel to budge.. nonviolent resistance, legal accountability, BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions).. has had some measure of success.
Norman Finkelstein
#44. I focus on my work. If I let myself get distracted by the insults and slanders I wouldn't get anything substantive done.
Norman Finkelstein
#45. You may wonder why a question of manners has got me so exercised. It's because I believe in a simple rule. If you see a person you know behave unreasonably to someone else, you can bet your last pound that before long he'll be behaving like that to you.
Daniel Finkelstein
#46. Yet all agree that the Pentateuch is not a single, seamless composition but a patchwork of different sources, each written under different historical circumstances to express different religious or political viewpoints.
Israel Finkelstein
#47. 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
#48. I'm politically on the left, no question about it. I oppose sweatshops, I oppose exploitation of labour in the third world.
Norman Finkelstein
#49. There's nothing Israel can do without US support. It can't breathe without US support. The US bankrolls everything, and it's just silly to think that Israel can do anything without the support.
Norman Finkelstein
#50. Why should these Palestinians, who have lived in Jerusalem for hundreds of years, be evicted from their homes so that Jews from Brooklyn can live in them?
Norman Finkelstein
#51. 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.
Norman Finkelstein
#52. Insofar as Zionism sought to solve the Jewish question, it must be reckoned not just a failure but a catastrophe: Israel is the main cause of anti-Semitism in the world today.
Norman Finkelstein
#53. Wisdom begins with sacrifice of immediate pleasures for long-range purposes.
Louis Finkelstein
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. I don't want to become a rhetorical speaker. My effectiveness is mastering all of the data and being able to respond.
Norman Finkelstein
#57. rather than having it transferred to them through rote memorization or a virtual intravenous tube.
Jonathan E. Finkelstein
#58. The whole purpose of annual reviews is to keep you abreast of whether or not you are fulfilling the requirements of tenure.
Norman Finkelstein
#59. Personal convictions are not politics. Personal convictions, if they become the subject of a group conviction, they become a cult.
Norman Finkelstein
#60. It will be my birthday on Tuesday. Last year, I reached the painful conclusion that there wasn't enough time left to read every book ever written. This year, my gloomy realisation is even more painful - I will not be able to correct everyone's mistakes before I depart.
Daniel Finkelstein
#61. 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
#62. Mainstream Jewish intellectuals became 'pro'-Israel after the June 1967 war when Israel became the U.S.A.' s strategic asset in the Middle East, i.e., when it was safe and reaped benefits. To credit them with ideological conviction is, in my opinion, very naive.
Norman Finkelstein
#63. 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
#64. I think Israel, as a number of commentators pointed out, is becoming an insane state. And we have to be honest about that. While the rest of the world wants peace, Europe wants peace, the US wants peace, but this state wants war, war and war.
Norman Finkelstein
#65. There is a fundamental principle. 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. That to me is a very basic, elementary, and uncomplicated question.
Norman Finkelstein
#66. Given the nonsense that is turned out daily by the Holocaust industry, the wonder is that there are so few skeptics.
Norman Finkelstein
#67. 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 US support for these policies.
Norman G. Finkelstein
#68. It therefore become essential for the future of Judaism itself that its advancement should be correlated with a similar effort to advance the cause of religion generally.
Louis Finkelstein
#69. 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.
Norman Finkelstein
#70. You know, frankly speaking, money just doesn't figure largely in my world view.
Norman Finkelstein
#71. We realize that Judaism as a faith can survive only in an atmosphere of general faith.
Louis Finkelstein
#72. 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.
Norman Finkelstein
#73. International law says people fighting for self-determination can use force in order to achieve their independence.
Norman Finkelstein
#76. 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
#77. They used to say Palestinians fight like heroes, now they say heroes fight like Palestinians
Norman Finkelstein
#78. 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.
Norman Finkelstein
#79. 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.
Norman Finkelstein
#80. 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
#81. From the long range point of view, I do not know of anything we can do more important than to make some contribution to the preservation of religion as a vital force in America.
Louis Finkelstein
#82. 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
#83. No doubt one can, in light of further study and life experience, come to repudiate past convictions.
Norman Finkelstein
#84. A rabbi should not despair if people do not do as much as they should. Every parent has that with children. God is merciful.
Louis Finkelstein
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