Political Terrorism Quotes & Sayings

There are millions of peaceful Muslims across the world, in countries like India, where there is not the problems we are seeing in nations that are controlled - have territory controlled by Al Qaida or ISIS, and we should direct at the problem, focus on the problem, and defeat radical Islamic terrorism. It's not a war on a faith; it's a war on a political and theocratic ideology that seeks to murder us. — Ted Cruz

Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with, not the social-Darwinist economic 'libertarianism' of the far right; but anarchism, as prefigured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism's principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principle moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Our talks in Paris tackled economic, democratic, security and political issues; we talked on means for combating terrorism, in addition to latest regional and international developments of mutual interest, especially those in region. — Ali Abdullah Saleh

If terrorism has no religion then intolerance has no country either — Subhasis Das

Rather than street crime, I argue that a better analogy is to voting. Having a high opportunity cost of time - resulting, say, from a high-paying job and a good education - should discourage people from voting, yet it is precisely those with a high opportunity cost of time who tend to vote. Why? Because they care about influencing the outcome and consider themselves sufficiently well informed to want to express their opinions. Terrorists also care about influencing political outcomes. Instead of asking who has a low salary and few opportunities, to understand what makes a terrorist we should ask: Who holds strong political views and is confident enough to try to impose their extremist vision by violent means? Most terrorists are not so desperately poor that they have nothing to live for. Instead they are people who care so deeply and fervently about a cause that they are willing to die for it. — Alan B. Krueger

What if I've died a long time ago and come here? he wondered. What if the defining characteristic of hell is that you're locked in an endless, blind battle to reform it? — Karan Mahajan

Terrorism is a state of mind that on the one hand has to do with ignorance and, on the other hand, can be attributed to a feeling of desperation over the political situation, which at some point takes the form of revenge. — Bashar Al-Assad

Not all political actors share our vision of fighting terrorism, lessening tensions in the region and focusing on building the economy. It is natural that they would challenge the government, but we have fought every challenge effectively. The daily ups and down of democracy should not be interpreted as lack of stability. — Asif Ali Zardari

Fear, that's the great motivator though. Fear keeps it all in check. Fear of one's neighbor. Fear of those who don't look like you. Fear of those who live in some barren desert halfway across the globe," Sean continued. "Domestic terrorism, just as much as fear of those abroad has helped people accept more intrusion into their everyday lives. To accept less freedom as freedom itself. — Jordon Greene

So a while back I spent a night in jail. Now, as for exactly what landed me there, I'd be so delighted to never have to go into any of the details regarding that. Besides, other people's theories are so much more exotic and exciting than the reality. I've heard everything from 'attempted terrorism' to 'indecent public condescension. — Phillip Andrew Bennett Low

Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death. — Adolf Hitler

Terrorism doesn't just blow up buildings; it blasts every other issue off the political map. The spectre of terrorism - real and exaggerated - has become a shield of impunity, protecting governments around the world from scrutiny for their human rights abuses. — Naomi Klein

I don't have a brief for every single reaction of Israel, but I think it is important that the political negotiations occur free of the threat of terrorism. — Henry A. Kissinger

Defeating terrorism in Libya can only be achieved through the political and institutional determination of a united Libyan government, which will need the strong and unequivocal support from the international community in confronting the myriad challenges facing Libya. — Bernardino Leon

When we use the word domestic [terrorism], we discount its actual impact as political terrorism, which is, of course, political violence meant to impact an audience outside of the immediate victims. — Malcolm Wrightson Nance

There is no moral difference between a Stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. They both kill innocent people for political reasons. — Tony Benn

Ours is an age in which thousands are driven daily from their homelands by the unforgiving brutalities of war, terrorism, political oppression, starvation, disease, economic piracy, and the relentless suffocation of that singular breath which makes human beings individuals. — Aberjhani

I think that you have a situation where one political party, in specific, if you watched the Republican debate, it's all about terrorism. — Juan Williams

We can't accommodate terrorism. When someone uses the slaughter of innocent people to advance a so-called political cause, at that point the political cause becomes immoral and unjust and they should be eliminated from any serious discussion, any serious debate. — Rudy Giuliani

Any play that makes an audience think out of the box, that makes connections to life and names our pain and by doing so makes our pain subject to thinking and the process of understanding, is doing something inherently political. By promoting understanding, by putting experience in context, by making connections between the normal and the rational, theatre is an act of anti-terrorism. It stimulates courage and a survival spirit. In that sense of political, there are a lot of serious plays doing their work in the world. — John Lahr

Now, here's a good question: should serious people focus on global political instability - terrorism, failing states, nuclear weapons - or should we focus on global climate instability - droughts, floods, extreme weather? Here's the correct answer: yes, both, because climate disruption will make every other national security problem worse. — Van Jones

[T]he enduring problem for liberals, as for everyone else, is not whether history will judge them wise or foolish regarding the war on terrorism; it is, rather, the way that the past decade has splintered them away from other Americans. This fracture comes with a steep price: in today's toxic atmosphere, liberals are no less cynical, shortsighted, and parochial than anyone else, and they understand their fellow-Americans just as badly as they themselves are understood. When liberals look at red-state voters, they see either a mob of pious know-nothings or the insensible victims of militarism and class warfare. Yet ... [such people] defy fixed categories, which means that they have to be figured out the hard way
on their own terms. — George Packer

When the United States was in control of counternarcotics, the US governments used drug trafficking for purely geopolitical purposes ... The US uses drug trafficking and terrorism for political control ... We have nationalised the fight against drug trafficking. — Evo Morales

When it comes to terrorism, governments seem to suffer from a collective amnesia. All of our historical experience tells us that there can be no purely military solution to a political problem, and yet every time we confront a new terrorist group, we begin by insisting we will never talk to them. — Jonathan Powell

Often in my lectures when I use the phrase "imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy" to describe our nation's political system, audiences laugh. No one has ever explained why accurately naming this system is funny. The laughter is itself a weapon of patriarchal terrorism. — Bell Hooks

I should have paid greater attention to my mentor in graduate school, Samuel Huntington, who once explained that Americans never recognize that, in the developing world, the key is not the kind of government - communist, capitalist, democratic, dictatorial - but the degree of government. That absence of government is what we are watching these days, from Libya to Iraq to Syria.
("Why they still hate us, 13 years later," Washington Post, 09/05/2014) — Fareed Zakaria

Anyone with a gun can go out and commit an act of terrorism, even without a political affiliation. — Aaron McGruder

Terrorism has made our world an integrated community in a new and frightening way. Not merely the activities of our neighbors, but those of the inhabitants of the most remote mountain valleys of the farthest-flung countries of our planet, have become our business. We need to extend the reach of the criminal law there and to have the means to bring terrorists to justice without declaring war on an entire country in order to do it. For this we need a sound global system of criminal justice, so justice does not become the victim of national differences of opinion. We also need, though it will be far more difficult to achieve, a sense that we really are one community, that we are people who recognize not only the force of prohibitions against killing each other but also the pull of obligations to assist one another. This may not stop religious fanatics from carrying out suicide missions, but it will help to isolate them and reduce their support. — Peter Singer

Fuzzy and ideological definitions of terrorism just make it easier to kill people. When you know your actions will kill innocent noncombatants, that's terrorism. And it must be clearly named as unacceptable - no matter who does it (individuals, groups, or states), whatever the weapons, the expressed intentions, or political justifications. — Jim Wallis

Strategic Failure: The ill-will caused by drone strikes are not reducing the threat of terrorism but increasing it. While there were many individuals who once had positive views of the United States, new polling shows the anti-American sentiment effect of drone strikes. Such sentiments discredit diplomatic and NGO efforts to address the civilian and political issues in sveral countries, and potentially drive people into the ranks of militant organizations. Finally, in the very long run, they share our concern about the danger of setting precedent. They envision a future where not only do countries have the ability to indiscriminately attack people, but that dangerous and radical non-state actors can do so as well. — Harry Jones

Looked at objectively, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths resulting from political violence are produced by what should be understood as "state terror." Terrorism also serves as an excuse to avoid diplomacy and the peaceful resolution of conflict. — Richard A. Falk

The real causes of terrorism are not poverty and oppression per se, but rather the bankruptcy of materialist ideologies, like Neo-Conservatism, which promise much but deliver little. The central doctrine of Neo-Conservatism is "democratic capitalism." This is the ultimate oxymoron, because in practice the political pluralism that should underlie democracy cannot exist in a climate of economic plutocracy. — Robert Dickson Crane

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

I also do not believe that the United States can let itself be driven into a political role by escalating terrorism, and therefore, the leaders of the Arab world and Arafat should do their utmost to put an end to this and then the United States should do its utmost to produce a political solution. — Henry A. Kissinger

Extreme poverty is the best breeding ground on earth for disease, political instability, and terrorism. — Jeffrey Sachs

The Terror was over but its effects were as long-lasting as they were momentous. The experience divided the population so sharply that every subsequent political crisis was influenced profoundly. Right across Europe, the horrors of this terrible year made even mildly progressive reform more difficult and made the political and social establishment both more secure and more conservative. So the Revolution's political legacy was Janus-faced: on the one side benign libertarian ideology, on the other malignant state terrorism. It would be difficult to say which has proved the more influential. — Timothy C.W. Blanning

Al Qaeda's central political objective is the creation of an Islamic republic, not the progressive realignment of American foreign policy. — Simon Cottee

Killing in the name of religion defines someone who is ignorant and actually void of religion. God does not condone terror. To kill innocent people to make a political statement is like shooting a dove to say hunting is wrong. — Suzy Kassem

Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States. — William Blum

When private bands of fanatics commit atrocities we call them "terrorists," which they are, and have no trouble dismissing their reasons. But when governments do the same, and on a much larger scale, the word "terrorism" is not used, and we consider it a sign of our democracy that the acts become subject to debate. If the word "terrorism" has a useful meaning (and I believe it does, because it marks off an act as intolerable, since it involves the indiscriminate use of violence against human beings for some political purpose), then it applies exactly to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. — Howard Zinn

Terrorism is not an expression of rage. Terrorism is a political weapon. Remove a government's facade of infallibility, and you remove it's people's faith. — Dan Brown

Whether you call it terrorism or resistance, and whether you like Hamas or not, it is a political entity that no one can ignore. — Bashar Al-Assad

In the background lurks the scourge of international terrorism. There are people exercising power in a few countries and leading political factions in others who seem to be moved by narrow, brutal and irrational impulses. Their view of their own self-interest is so blinkered as to leave no space for purely human values, for peaceful negotiation or for economic advancement. They are bent on the destruction of the established order and of civilised ways of doing business. They must never be allowed to succeed. — Margaret Thatcher

The world is beset by challenges including the ongoing danger of international terrorism, and the significant political and economic threats posed by factors such as the high levels of corporate and sovereign debt and persistent unemployment. — Dan Quayle

Don't you just hate it when the war on terrorism interferes with political correctness and liberalism's equality fetish? — Don Feder

Terrorism n.
Violence for political purposes or the politically motivated threat of violence which, either intentionally or unintentionally, challenges the state's monopoly on political violence. — Leslie Starr O'Hara

Invisible violence in Pakistan, violence against brown people, ongoing violence in Iraq - that's got to be quantified in the same way as the cinematic glamorous violence that happens in recognisable cities. — Russell Brand

Terrorism is an act of violence whose primary purpose is to create fear and, through that, a political result. — George Friedman

Some readers may have noticed an icy little missive from Noam Chomsky ["Letters," December 3], repudiating the very idea that he and I had disagreed on the "roots" of September 11. I rush to agree. Here is what he told his audience at MIT on October 11:
I'll talk about the situation in Afghanistan ... Looks like what's happening is some sort of silent genocide ... It indicates that whatever, what will happen we don't know, but plans are being made and programs implemented on the assumption that they may lead to the death of several million people in the next - in the next couple of weeks ... very casually with no comment ... we are in the midst of apparently trying to murder three or four million people.
Clever of him to have spotted that (his favorite put-down is the preface 'Turning to the facts ... ') and brave of him to have taken such a lonely position. As he rightly insists, our disagreements are not really political. — Christopher Hitchens

Terrorism is the intentional use of, or threat to use violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain political aims. — Boaz Ganor

Give the FBI unchecked domestic spying powers and instead of focusing on preventing terrorism, it will revert to doing what it does best - monitoring, harassing, and intimidating political dissidents and thousands of harmless immigrants. — Wendy Kaminer

Nor should we exclude the possibility that Islamic terrorism may begin to make common cause with Western political extremists of the far Left and far Right. — Richard Perle

I am politically incorrect, that's true. Political correctness to me is just intellectual terrorism. I find that really scary, and I won't be intimidated into changing my mind. Everyone isn't going to love you all the time. — Mel Gibson

I am sometimes asked, "How do you know there won't be a war tomorrow (or a genocide, or an act of terrorism) that will refute your whole thesis?" The question misses the point of this book. The point is not that we have entered an Age of Aquarius in which every last earthling has been pacified forever. It is that substantial reductions in violence have taken place, and it is important to understand them. Declines in violence are caused by political, economic, and ideological conditions that take hold in particular cultures at particular times. If the conditions reverse, violence could go right back up. — Steven Pinker

The Obama administration has a strange theory. Terrorism is a response of uneducated human beings who have been disenfranchised politically and economically. If we can solve the 'root grievances' of the poor and oppressed around the world, there will be no more terrorists, and Americans will be safe. This view is of course absurd. If poverty, lack of education, and political disenfranchisement were the causes of terrorism, then much of India and most of China would be populated by terrorists. But they are not. And this is because terrorism is the violent expression of ideology, not objective conditions - what has famously been called 'propaganda of the deed.' The terrorist's ideology may be secular and political - communist or fascist, for example - or it may be religious - Christian, Islamic, or even Hindu. — Sebastian Gorka

For many Washington liberals, terrorism was not the instrument of political fanatics and evil men, but was the product of social conditions - poverty, racism and oppression - for which the Western democracies, including Israel were always ultimately to blame. — David Horowitz

Part of this myth related to assertions about the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) - assertions promoted by liberal Zionists in both the US and Israel and shared with the rest of the political forces in Israel. The allegation is that the PLO - inside and outside of Palestine - was conducting a war of terror for the sake of terror. Unfortunately, this demonization is still very prevalent in the West and has been accentuated after 2001 by the attempt to equate Islam, terrorism, and Palestine. — Noam Chomsky

There are only a handful of countries that have experienced what Indonesia has endured: financial crisis, political instability, separatism, ethnic conflicts, terrorism and natural disasters. Given the array of challenges that confronted us, what Indonesia has become today is nothing short of remarkable. Indonesia today is a country with a different Islam, democracy and modernity can go hand in hand. — Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono

It would be easy, but misleading, to see the rise of terrorism expertise as simply a response to an increase in political violence. This simplistic empirical approach neglects the reflexive relationship between experts and their objects of knowledge. Others have suggested that we view terrorism expertise as a product of political propaganda by governments seeking to demonize their enemies and draw attention away from their own use of violence. But this "critical" approach (see, for example, Chomsky 2001; Herman and O'Sullivan 1989), which argues that terrorism experts constitute an "industry," funded and organized by the state and other elite interests, neglects the agency and interests of the experts themselves, and the ways in which these interests may either harmonize or clash with those of the state, the media, and the "terrorists" themselves. — Lisa Stampnitzky

What proved so attractive was that terrorism had become a kind of philosophy through which to express frustration, resentment, and blind hatred, a kind of political expressionism which used bombs to express oneself, which watched delightedly the publicity given to resounding deeds and was absolutely willing to pay the price of life for having succeeded in forcing the recognition of one's existence on the normal strata of society. — Hannah Arendt

Try to look at causes and solve problems. Do not concentrate on military solutions. Do not seek military solutions. Terrorism is a political problem. Seek political solutions. Diplomacy works. — Eqbal Ahmed

They were dealt with as in war, and they naturally employed the means that were used against them. — Leo Tolstoy

As you know, the public conversation about the connection between Islamic ideology and Muslim intolerance and violence has been stifled by political correctness. In the West, there is now a large industry of apology and obfuscation designed, it would seem, to protect Muslims from having to grapple with the kinds of facts we've been talking about. The humanities and social science departments of every university are filled with scholars and pseudo-scholars - deemed to be experts in terrorism, religion, Islamic jurisprudence, anthropology, political science, and other fields - who claim that Muslim extremism is never what it seems. These experts insist that we can never take Islamists and jihadists at their word and that none of their declarations about God, paradise, martyrdom, and the evils of apostasy have anything to do with their real motivations. — Sam Harris

Recession, terrorism, debts, political turmoil, disease, famine, mortality... screw it, I'm putting googly eyes on things. — Charles R.L. Guthrie

Why is one view permissible and the other criminally barred-other than because the force of law is being used to control political discourse and one form of terrorism (violence in the Muslim world) is done by, rather than to, the west? — Glenn Greenwald

Terrorism, to me, is the use of terror for political purpose, and terror is indiscriminate murder of civilians to make a political point. — Al Franken

Terrorism, ladies and gentlemen, in my eyes I have a very, very, very simple explanation. Gangs of criminals, killers, used unfortunately by certain governments in the past for political purposes, who are on their own now as gangs. — Hamid Karzai

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

Political leaders still think things can be done through force, but that cannot solve terrorism. Backwardness is the breeding ground of terror, and that is what we have to fight. — Mikhail Gorbachev

We have become a nation ruled by fear. Since the end of the Second World War, various political leaders have fostered fear in the American people
fear of communism, fear of terrorism, fear of immigrants, fear of people based on race and religion, fear of gays and lesbians in love who just want to get married and fear of people who are somehow different. It is fear that allows political leaders to manipulate us all and distort our national priorities. — Mike Gravel

Political monopoly and economic monopoly are two sides of the same coin, two heads of the same monster. Despite all the claims to the contrary, the essential ideology of Neo-Conservatism is to preserve the status quo, with all of its injustices. Its public relations experts call for "freedom and democracy" without a framework of higher values. They fail to comprehend the need for a paradigm of justice and therefore are blind to what concerns most of the people in the world. This failure is the taproot of terrorism. — Robert Dickson Crane

In 1933, it was in Franklin Roosevelt's political interest to tell Americans the greatest danger was "fear itself." Seventy years later, it was in George W. Bush's political interest to do the opposite: The White House got the support it needed for invading Iraq by stoking public fears of terrorism and connecting those fears to Iraq. — Daniel Gardner

The language of these Soviet show trials ... could only be understood in the Aesopian imagery of the closed Bolshevik universe of conspiracies of evil against good in which 'terrorism' simply signified 'any doubt about the policies or character of Stalin.' All his political opponents were per se assassins. More than two 'terrorists' was a 'conspiracy' ... — Simon Sebag Montefiore

If we ever hope to rid the world of the political AIDS of our time, terrorism, the rule must be clear: One does not deal with terrorists; one does not bargain with terrorists; one kills terrorists. — Meir Kahane

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

an ideology may resonate among a particular community due to a broad range of political issues like incompetent, authoritarian or corrupt governments, as well as economic issues like widespread poverty or unemployment. In many instances, the political and socioeconomic grievances that lead to terrorism are tied to a government's legitimacy, or lack thereof. — James J.F. Forest

The definition of terrorism is killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation. — Caleb Carr

We are living in an era in which billions of people are grappling to promote communication, tolerance, and understanding over the more destructive forces of war, terrorism, and political chaos that have characterized the beginning of the 21st Century. — Aberjhani

Almost no one tolerates the exclusivity and supremacy of Christ these days, even some who profess to be Christians. The message of the cross is not politically correct - it's the singularity of the gospel, on top of everything else, that bothers people. Can you imagine for a moment what might happen if a celebrity or political leader just said, "I'm a Christian and if you're not, you're going to hell"? Yikes! And then imagine if he said, "All the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and all the people who believe they can earn salvation, whether liberal Protestants or Roman Catholics, and all the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses - you're all going to eternal hell. But I care about you so much, I want to give you the gospel of Jesus Christ, because it is far more important than wars in the Middle East, terrorism, or any domestic policy." You can't be faithful and popular, so take your pick. — John F. MacArthur Jr.