TERRORISM QUOTES
quotations about terrorism
We do not create terrorism by fighting the terrorists. We invite terrorism by ignoring them.
GEORGE W. BUSH
speech, December 18, 2005
Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.
NOAM CHOMSKY
9-11
Terrorism [takes] us back to ages we thought were long gone if we allow it a free hand to corrupt democratic societies and destroy the basic rules of international life.
JACQUES CHIRAC
speech, September 24, 1986
Fighting terrorism is like being a goalkeeper. You can make a hundred brilliant saves but the only shot that people remember is the one that gets past you.
PAUL WILKINSON
London Daily Telegraph, September 1, 1992
The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?
GEORGE ORWELL
1984
Every leader, and every regime, and every movement, and every organization that steps across the line to terrorism must be banished from the discourse of civilized human life.
ALAN KEYES
speech, April 21, 2002
Like slavery and piracy, terrorism has no place in the modern world.
GEORGE W. BUSH
Address to the United Nations General Assembly, September 23, 2008
The big threat to America is the way we react to terrorism by throwing away what everybody values about our country--a commitment to human rights. America is a great nation because we are a good nation. When we stop being a good nation, we stop being great.
BOBBY KENNEDY
O Magazine, February 2007
Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
"Terrorism: Notes Toward a Definition"
The war we fight today is more than a military conflict; it is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century. On one side are those who believe in the values of freedom and moderation -- the right of all people to speak, and worship, and live in liberty. And on the other side are those driven by the values of tyranny and extremism -- the right of a self-appointed few to impose their fanatical views on all the rest. As veterans, you have seen this kind of enemy before. They're successors to Fascists, to Nazis, to Communists, and other totalitarians of the 20th century. And history shows what the outcome will be: This war will be difficult; this war will be long; and this war will end in the defeat of the terrorists and totalitarians, and a victory for the cause of freedom and liberty.
GEORGE W. BUSH
speech at the American Legion National Convention in Salt Lake City, UT, August 31, 2006
When I say that terrorism is war against civilization, I may be met by the objection that terrorists are often idealists pursuing worthy ultimate aims -- national or regional independence, and so forth. I do not accept this argument. I cannot agree that a terrorist can ever be an idealist, or that the objects sought can ever justify terrorism. The impact of terrorism, not merely on individual nations, but on humanity as a whole, is intrinsically evil, necessarily evil and wholly evil.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU
International Terrorism
Terrorism has become the systematic weapon of a war that knows no borders or seldom has a face.
JACQUES CHIRAC
speech, September 24, 1986
We live in a time of terror, and contrary to what we see on television and allow ourselves to believe, the real goal of terror is not to kill people but to kill thought; to so demoralize a society that it implodes from within.
JOHN LAHR
"Questions for John Lahr", The New Yorker, January 23, 2009
Terrorism is the price of empire. If you do not wish to pay the price, you must give up the empire.
PAT BUCHANAN
Where the Right Went Wrong
We can invade everyone from Grenada to Afghanistan, but if anyone spills a drop of our blood, it's terrorism.
PAUL CHRISTOPHER
The Lucifer Gospel
It's much, much harder to terrorise a population into submission than official and unofficial purveyors of mass violence always think it is. Normality isn't a fixed state but a spectrum with a remarkably wide range. Terrorists are contemptible for many reasons, but one of them is the stupidity of not knowing this. They try to magnify themselves with epic acts of cruelty. In the end they are diminished and defeated by the strange ability of human beings to step around the pools of blood, keep going and forget.
FINTAN O'TOOLE
"Terrorism is becoming normal, and that will be its undoing", Irish Times, June 4, 2017
A "war against terrorism" is an impracticable conception if it means fighting terrorism with terrorism.
JOHN MORTIMER
Where There's a Will...
If inciting people to do that [9/11] is terrorism, and if killing those who kill our sons is terrorism, then let history be witness that we are terrorists.
OSAMA BIN LADEN
interview, October 2001
Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
PETER USTINOV
Achtung! Vorurteile
What distinguishes terrorism is the willful and calculated choice of innocents as targets.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU
Terrorism: How the West Can Win