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.
Everybody wants peace. That's a truism. There is no point in accomplishing through war what you can accomplish through peace.
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.
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.
International law says people fighting for self-determination can use force in order to achieve their independence.
When you are a people's movement, you have one thing. Your only asset is people. And you have to deal with real people. Not the people of your imagination. Not the people you wish people would be. But people as they exist actually out there in the real world.
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.
No conditions justify torture.
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 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 whole purpose of annual reviews is to keep you abreast of whether or not you are fulfilling the requirements of tenure.
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.
Personal convictions are not politics. Personal convictions, if they become the subject of a group conviction, they become a cult.
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 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'm an old fan of the Negro spirituals.
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 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.
