Norman Finkelstein Quotes

Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Norman Finkelstein Quotes. The wide variety of quotes available makes it possible to find a quote to suit your needs. You’ve likely heard some of the Norman Finkelstein Quotes before, but that’s because they truly are great.

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

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

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

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 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

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

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 Finkelstein

Every victory of Hezbollah, I celebrate.

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

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

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

Norman Finkelstein

Teaching is in my bones. I love to teach.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Norman Finkelstein

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

No conditions justify torture.

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

I’m an old fan of the Negro spirituals.

Norman Finkelstein

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

Norman Finkelstein

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

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

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

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

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

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

Norman Finkelstein Quotes

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