quotations about terrorism
Serious research and development efforts are required to produce technologies, strategies, organizations, and trained personnel who can go into failed states, work with our allies and friends, and promote the political and economic reforms that will meet popular needs and reduce the sources of terrorism and conflict.
WESLEY CLARK
Winning Modern Wars
You can't make war against terror. Terror is a technique of battle. It's a tactic that has been employed since time immemorial. You can conduct clandestine action against terrorists, and that must be done.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
radio interview, The Book Show, November 19, 2008
You cannot win a War on Terrorism. It's like having a war on jealousy.
DAVID CROSS
Shut Up You F***ing Baby!
Now the price they have to pay for multiculturalism is the risk that you're walking on the sidewalk and a man will -- or a woman, will purposefully mow you down. And then while you're maybe finishing your cappuccino in a cafe, or having a drink, someone will put a knife to your throat and slit it with the attempt, perhaps, to behead you. That's what we all have to live with for the free and open society that [London Mayor] Sadiq Khan and all these other multiculturalists want Britain to become. They want, they want -- this is the nirvana they wanted to create and this is what we have.
LAURA INGRAHAM
Fox & Friends, June 6, 2017
Terrorism isn't James Bond or Tom Clancy. Even al-Quaeda is looking old school these days--now it's just some guy with a bomb. He walks the same roads as us. He thinks the same thoughts. But he's got a bomb.
MICHAEL MARSHALL
Blood of Angels
The greatest danger of a terrorist's bomb is in the explosion of stupidity that it provokes.
OCTAVE MIRBEAU
"Pour Jean Grave", Le Journal, February 19, 1894
Terrorism set up by reformers may be just as bad as Government terrorism, and it is often worse because it draws a certain amount of false sympathy.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Young India, December 18, 1924
Terrorism must be outlawed by all civilized nations -- not explained or rationalized, but fought and eradicated. Nothing can, nothing will justify the murder of innocent people and helpless children.
ELIE WIESEL
Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1986
After every terrorist outrage there is a renewed commitment from political leaders to defeat terrorism. But the underlying truth is that terrorism is self-defeating. It suffers the paradox of all forms of outrage: the more of it there is, the less effective it becomes. And for much of the world, terrorism is becoming normalised: it is part of the texture of contemporary life.
FINTAN O'TOOLE
"Terrorism is becoming normal, and that will be its undoing", Irish Times, June 4, 2017
The core belief that drives terrorism is the notion of a "holy place," along with the idea that some people belong there and other people don't. That's why the only solution to terrorism is for religious scholars to hold a global summit to agree on the definition of "holy place." Once they agree on a definition, it will be easier to mock it into submission.
SCOTT ADAMS
Dilbert Newsletter #58
There may have been, in aggregate, more terrorism in the seventies and eighties, but it was discriminate. They kept their terrorism within boundaries related to their cause. Today it's different. It's less predictable, less coherent and less cohesive.
BRUCE HOFFMAN
"How Different -- and Dangerous -- is Terrorism Today?", The New Yorker, June 5, 2017
Civilians, then, are the key to the terrorists strategy. They kill civilians, and more often than not, they hide behind them--hoping that the prospect of more innocent deaths will help them escape retribution.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU
Terrorism: How the West Can Win
If I truly believed that it was the right thing to do, that it was what sovereign God wanted me to do, and that if I did it I'd be rewarded in heaven with a huge mansion, 80,000 servants, and 72 beautiful, willing virgins all waiting there just for me, I'd crash a plane into a building too.
REVEREND LOVESHADE
"How to Raise a Terrorist"
Terror consists mostly of useless cruelties perpetrated by frightened people in order to reassure themselves.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS
letter to Marx, September 4, 1870
Terrorism is a form of psychological warfare. Most terrorist groups lack the resources, expertise and manpower to defeat state actors. Instead, they promote their agenda through violence that shapes perceptions of political and social issues.
ARIE PERLIGER
"Homegrown Terrorism and Why the Threat of Right-Wing Extremism Is Rising in America", Newsweek, June 4, 2017
Terrorism is the use of indiscriminate violence for political ends. It has a logic, even if it is one we mostly do not care to understand.
JONATHAN COOK
"Why the London Terror Attack Happened Now. Terrorism is the Use of Indiscriminate Violence for Political Ends", Global Research, June 5, 2017
How do you defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002
We must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.
MARGARET THATCHER
speech to the American Bar Association, July 15, 1985
Are terrorists going to be deterred -- are terrorists going to be scared if we react violently? No. They love it. That's what they dote on. They dote on violence. They dote on having more reasons to commit more terrorism.
HOWARD ZINN
Bill Moyers interview, January 10, 2003
The attacks will not stop. The more Islamic State (IS) sees its 'caliphate' being swept into the dustbin of history, the more home-grown disciples in Britain will lash out. In medical terms, this brand of terrorism is not a cancer. It can neither be cured by surgery nor kill what people are. It has killed individuals, each of whom it is a duty to mourn and a privilege to remember. But, to a democratic society, this is a chronic condition, like diabetes, that people must learn to manage.
MATTHEW NORMAN
"Threat of terrorism is an incurable condition we'll have to live with", Herald, June 7, 2017