Terrorism Quotes

There are many ways to honor America. This book is mine. I have completed this journey of self-education in the belief that the most terrifying possibility since 9/11 has not been terrorism--as frightening as that is--but the prospect that Americans will give up their rights in pursuing the chimera of security.

~ David K. Shipler

People who believe their god loves them unconditionally are less able to be controlled through divine terrorism.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

The idea that a dysfunctional thought could take root in a vacuum, the individual anonymous and wraithlike, unknowable because, especially at first, he or she had no interaction with other people. Because more and more in the modern Internet era you came across isolated instances of a mind virus or worm: brains that self-washed, bathed in received ideologies that came down from on high, ideologies that could remain dormant or hidden for years, silent as death until they struck. Almost anything could happen now, and did.

~ Jeff Vandermeer

Question: Which Mediterranean government shares all of Ronald Reagan's views on international terrorism, the present danger of Soviet advance, the hypocrisy of the United Nations, the unreliability of Europe, the perfidy of the Third World and the need for nuclear defense policy? Question: Which Mediterranean government is Ronald Reagan trying, with the help of George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger, to replace with a government led by a party which professes socialism and which contains extreme leftists?If you answered 'the government of Israel' to both of the above, you know more about political and international irony than the President does.

~ Christopher Hitchens

The President is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the President on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm.

~ Christopher Hitchens

Far to our left I could see a commercial airliner on final approach to Soekarno-Hatta. Far to our right I could see the outline of tall city buildings. The imagery was hard to ignore. In the midst was an impoverished world filled with dangerous radicals. Some believed it was God’s will to crash airplanes into buildings. Some recruited children to self-detonate on buses and in coffee shops. It must be incredibly difficult to hold fast to hope when you live in such a world. It’s also hard to keep faith with humanity when religious ideology is used as an impetus for war. But I also believe that for every war there is a hero … and for me, Jakarta will always be Indira’s city.

~ Tucker Elliot

Just because I wear black and keep a private journal, that doesn't mean I'm going to blow up the school. Or terrorize mindless cheerleaders, for that matter.

~ Kelly Creagh

Funny, for all surveillance, Osama bin Laden is still free—and we're not. Guess who's winning the war on terror?

~ Cory Doctorow

I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

~ George W. Bush

Every morningI wake up with the newsof bloodshed.I feel my body,desperate to know whetherI’m still alive.

~ Suman Pokhrel

We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attacks on the twin towers and the pentagon and the American struggle in Iraq. These events swung American public opinion in our favor

~ Benjamin Netanyahu

Since I speak and write about this a good deal, I am often asked at public meetings, in what sometimes seems to me a rather prurient way, whether I myself or my family have 'ever been threatened' by jihadists. My answer is that yes, I have, and so has everyone else in the audience, if they have paid enough attention to the relevant bin-Ladenist broadcasts to notice the fact.

~ Christopher Hitchens

The surest way to prevent seditions...is to take away the matter of them.

~ Francis Bacon

[T]his is an enemy for life, as well as an enemy of life.

~ Christopher Hitchens

‎The greatest danger of a terrorist's bomb is in the explosion of stupidity that it provokes.

~ Octave Mirbeau

The car bomb is the poor man’s air force.

~ Mike Davis

We will consider every hand who will try to take our weapons, as an Israeli hand.

~ Hassan Nasrallah

Naturally, therefore, these people talk about 'a happy time coming'; 'the paradise of the future'; 'mankind freed from the bondage of vice and the bondage of virtue', and so on. And so also the men of the inner circle speak — the sacred priesthood. They also speak to applauding crowds of the happiness of the future, and of mankind freed at last. But in their mouths — and the policeman lowered his voice — in their mouths these happy phrases have a horrible meaning. They are under no illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon this earth can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or wrong, they mean the grave. They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then themselves. That is why they throw bombs instead of firing pistols. The innocent rank and file are disappointed because the bomb has not killed the king; but the high-priesthood are happy because it has killed somebody.

~ G.k. Chesterton

I can remember when I was a bit of an ETA fan myself. It was in 1973, when a group of Basque militants assassinated Adm. Carrero Blanco. The admiral was a stone-faced secret police chief, personally groomed to be the successor to the decrepit Francisco Franco. His car blew up, killing only him and his chauffeur with a carefully planted charge, and not only was the world well rid of another fascist, but, more important, the whole scheme of extending Franco's rule was vaporized in the same instant. The dictator had to turn instead to Crown Prince Juan Carlos, who turned out to be the best Bourbon in history and who swiftly dismantled Franco's entire system. If this action was 'terrorism,' it had something to be said for it. Everyone I knew in Spain made a little holiday in their hearts when the gruesome admiral went sky-high.

~ Christopher Hitchens

One of the most often asked questions posed after America was attacked on 9/11 was, ‘What has the United States done to arouse so much Muslim hatred?’ The question, however, is on the same moral level as asking what German and other European Jews did to cause the Holocaust, or what blacks did to arouse the hatred among the American whites who lynched them.

~ Dennis Prager

Save for the fit of bizarre laughter at the end, the man seems so calm, sensible, rational. Duffy wishes he met more like him. A bit paranoid about this terrorism business, but frankly, he might be right. You never know who is around the bend to blow you up, destroy your symbols, set your embassy on fire, shit on your toilet seat, or send anthrax swimming into the subway air and into everyone's lungs.

~ Alex Kudera

Muslim religious leaders — from Al-Azhar in Cairo to local imams throughout the world - need to say exactly what Pope Francis said to the Catholic members of the Mafia: ‘Any Muslim who commits an act of terror — that is, deliberately murders civilians of any nationality or religion — goes to hell.

~ Dennis Prager

Most of the barbaric and vicious acts of terror committed against innocent civilians around the world in the last thirty years have been done by Muslims. They have even carried out more bombings than the less-publicized Hindu Tamil Tiger separatists, who have committed more than two hundred suicide attacks in Sri Lanka. It is a fact that the nineteen terrorists who hijacked airplanes and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, were Muslims who practiced the teachings of the Koran and sought mental fortitude in its verses as their planes crashed.

~ Brigitte Gabriel

As of the second decade in the twenty-first century, nearly all acts of terror around the world (as opposed to acts of terror confined to one country, as in the case of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka) have been committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. Of course the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists. But this frequently noted fact is meaningless.

~ Dennis Prager

As of the second decade in the twenty-first century, nearly all acts of terror around the world (as opposed to acts of terror confined to one country, as in the case of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka) have been committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. Of course the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists. But this frequently noted fact is meaningless. The vast majority of Germans were not members of the Gestapo, nor were the vast majority of Russians members of the Communist Party, let alone the KGB. Not only is international terror overwhelmingly Muslim, but there are virtually no terrorists committing terror in the name of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any other religion.

~ Dennis Prager

The whole point of international terrorism is to shock the world with the most horrific spectacle imaginable.

~ Steven Pinker

The thought that is billed at the price of fear and flattery is as inconsolable as that which is paid for at the price of gold. - On Fear and Thought.

~ Lamine Pearlheart

What doesn’t belong to us, we have no right to call our own. One can’t win anything by force, ever. That is not what we, Kashmiris do. That is not what we, Indians do.

~ Sanchit Gupta

The city was a puzzle box built of symbols, a confusion of old and new, armored cars and donkeys in the streets, Bedouins and bankers. The Turks and Haredim, the showy Greek and Russian processions -- everyone seemed to be in costume, reenacting the miraculous past.

~ Stewart O'nan

Oops! We thought he had a gun!’ So you shot me in the back three times ’cause you thought I had a gun? I was gonna sue, but they said they was gonna kill me. I was 18 years old, I didn’t have nobody, I didn’t have all this. They kept pickin’ me up, kept lockin’ my ass up, beating me, until I dropped the lawsuit. When I dropped the lawsuit, that’s when everything stopped. That’s what the fuck happened to me. I was terrorized by some terrorists.

~ Jeff Smith

ISIS was not particular about how their soldiers made it to Jannah, so long as they inflicted maximum damage..

~ Kenneth Eade

Terrorism was like heroin – once a lonely, desperate soul was hooked on it, he or she became a fanatic – radicalized they call it – ready to die for a paradise in heaven that didn’t exist by helping to rain down a hell on earth for all who didn’t believe in it.

~ Kenneth Eade

You can't lock yourself up and make yourself completely safe. You can't. It's not possible.

~ Pramila Jayapal

America has always prided itself on its multiculturalism and its multireligious communities, just as Lebanon prided itself on its multicultural, open-minded, and multireligious society. Today America’s lack of sufficient immigration and border control, like Lebanon’s, is allowing terrorists and other hostile individuals to come into our country at will. People who want to hurt us are mixed in with other Muslims who have no intention of becoming a part of our nation but are actually working to make America a part of their radical Islamic agenda. Muslims have become a sensitive issue in our American society, with demands and expectations, and a group to watch out for and be careful with. There are barely 6 million Muslims in America today out of a total U.S. population of 300 million, yet their presence has been seen and felt throughout every state in America. Stories of Islamic terrorist cells, Islamic charities linked to funding terrorism, Islamic mosques, and Muslims demanding more rights and acknowledgment are beginning to dominate the news. Islamic communities are harboring terrorist cells within. Their mosques are teaching hate against infidels both Christian and Jewish.

~ Brigitte Gabriel

Just as people asked ‘Why do they hate us?’ after 9/11, one evening I asked my father, ‘Why did they do this to us?’ He took a long breath and paused, deeply concerned about what he was about to say. ‘The Muslims bombed us because we are Christians. They want us dead because they hate us’ This hate was not because we had armies in the Middle East or because we supported Israel or for any of the reasons people easily turn to today. It was because we were Christians, infidels. As a child, I was just too young to understand all the political implications, but I understood one thing: people wanted to kill me simply because I was a Christian.

~ Brigitte Gabriel

Americans just don’t realize the viciousness of the militant Islamic fundamentalist.

~ Brigitte Gabriel

I think the biggest disservice to the American people was the denial by the networks to air video of the beheading of Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, or the many other hostages that were beheaded in Iraq. We as a society need to see the type of enemy we are fighting. People have been so sheltered in this country that they have not paid attention to what has been going on for the last twenty-some years. And today, even after the attack of September 11, people still cannot fathom that this type of barbarity could happen here.

~ Brigitte Gabriel

Throughout history there have been populations that have lived in desperation, and none of them have resorted to the intentional targeting and murder of children as an officially practiced and widely praised mode of achieving political ends. When extremist elements of otherwise legitimate liberation movements such as the Republican Sinn Fein have committed such atrocities, their actions have been unconditionally condemned by the civilized world, and their political objectives have been discredited by their vile crimes. This is not so with the Palestinians. Once upon a time there was a special place in the lowest depths of hell for anyone who would intentionally murder a child. Now that place is in the pantheon of Palestinian heroes. Now that behavior is legitimized as ‘armed struggle’ against Israeli ‘occupation’ by, among others, the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Commission, and the European Union. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the rise of Hamas in 1987, the campaign to destroy Israel has taken on an ugly, fanatic religious tone. Holy obligation reinforces (and is replacing) Palestinian nationalism as the motivation for committing terrorist murder. As we have seen the secular, ‘moderate’ factions of the Palestinian nationalist movement (such as Abbas’s Fatah Party) will shrink into insignificance, and is replaced by terrorist Islamic factions such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Hamas receives financial and material support from the same sources as al Qaeda, and from al Qaeda directly. Islamic Jihad receives financial and material support from Iran, directly and through Hezbollah. These are the same international criminal entities that wage religion-based terror war against the United States. They do it for the same reason and by the same means: to make Islam supreme in the world, by the sword or the suicide bomb.

~ Brigitte Gabriel

The august international organizations charged with preserving peace and human dignity in the world—the UN, the EU, among others—would have preferred that terrorist atrocities be limited to Israel. However, once the intentional mass murder of innocent civilians was legitimized against Israel, it was legitimized everywhere, constrained by nothing more than the strongly held beliefs of those who would become the mass murderers. Because the Palestinians were encouraged by most of the world to believe that the murder of innocent Israeli civilians is a legitimate tactic to advance the Palestinian nationalist cause, the Islamists believe that they may commit mass murder anywhere in the world to advance their holy cause. As a result, we suffer from a plague of Islamic terrorism, from Moscow to Madrid, from Bali to Beslan, from Nairobi to New York, authored and perfected by the Palestinians. Israel and the United States are not separate targets of Islamic terrorism. The whole world is its target. Israel and the United States share the bull’s-eye.

~ Brigitte Gabriel

Psychologically speaking (I’ll only wheel out the amateur psychology just this once, so bear with me), encounters that call up strong physical disgust or revulsion are often in fact projections of our own faults and weaknesses.

~ Haruki Murakami