Terrorist Attack Quotes & Sayings

As technology advances, so too does terrorists' use of technology to communicate - both to inspire and recruit. The widespread use of technology propagates the persistent terrorist message to attack U.S. interests, whether in the homeland or abroad. — James Comey

I can think of no faster way to unite the American people behind George W. Bush than a terrorist attack on an American target overseas. And I believe George W. Bush will quickly unite the American people through his foreign policy. — Henry A. Kissinger

We've only recently turned the corner on the Sept. 11 attacks being blamed on Jews and Israelis, as well as almost every other terrorist attack, whether in London, Madrid, Bali or Egypt. — Abraham Foxman

But, you know, when I look at somebody like Hillary Clinton, who sits there and tells her daughter and a government official that no, this was a terrorist attack, and then tells everybody else that it was a video. Where I came from, they call that a lie. — Benjamin Carson

terrorism is adamant. Fight against requires endurance, specific Counter-terrorism, Intelligence and swift operation — Michael Harris

More Americans die in gun homicides and suicides in six months than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Since the beginning of the Bush administration when we were attacked, September 11th, we've not had any major terrorist attack in this country. We've had individual crazy people, of normally, they look more like me than they look like Middle Easterners. — Sherrod Brown

We know we cannot underestimate the importance of emergency planning in our region, nor can we assume we'll have ample warning time. If an earthquake or terrorist attack hits, we won't necessarily have advance alerts or opportunities to double- and triple-check our plans. — Ellen Tauscher

As best I can tell there was no advance warning of the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, which was the first significant foreign terrorist activity in the U.S. No tip-offs that it was coming. — Bobby Ray Inman

Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy our country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. — Bruce Schneier

Every day I wake up, there's a little part of my brain that's thinking I might die in a terrorist attack today. — Nick Blaemire

No matter how much of our liberty Washington takes away in the name of security, there are no guarantees that there won't be another terrorist attack. Instead of attacking American liberties, the government ought to go after terrorists in their countries of origin. It should be like what our military attempted during WWII. Don't wait to defend ships against the kamikaze
bomb the fields where they take off. — Walter E. Williams

Take away the robots and the special effects, and Star Wars is just the simple story of a group of friends planning a terrorist attack. — Dana Gould

In fact, in Indiana we suspended the Syrian refugee program in the wake of the terrorist attack. We have no higher priority than the safety and security of the people of this country, and Donald Trump is right to articulate that view. — Mike Pence

First responders will be on the frontlines if there is a terrorist attack in our communities, and we must provide them with the tools they need to do their difficult jobs. — Ed Markey

The 9/11 terrorist attack was a faith-based initiative. — Dan Barker

Once again, there was a terrorist attack inside my mouth. — Namekojirushi

Terrorist groups will not, in most instances, openly recruit from universities or the well developed areas that politicians and business leaders are always focusing on. They will not flight newspaper or TV adverts, but will use belief systems riding on the back of disadvantages, poverty and problems that have remained unaddressed in particular communities, tribal and religious ideologies. They will recruit the most vulnerable to harm and attack the most vulnerable, in order to spite leaders and authorities. — Archibald Marwizi

The Times Square Incident wasn't a terrorist attack, it was a Jim Carrey movie. The terrorist locked the keys to the safe house he was going to escape to in the carbomb. And I love that he locked the carbomb. Nobody's getting my Ipod. Then he left the keys to carbomb hanging out of the tailgate of the carbomb, and built the carbomb out of fertilizer that wouldn't explode. I have been doing comedy for 25 years and I have never been that funny. — Christopher Titus

President Obama dropped the term 'war on terror', and rightly so. Terrorism is not an enemy but a type of warfare that may or may not be adopted by an enemy. Imagine if, after Pearl Harbor, an attack that relied on aircraft carriers, President Roosevelt had declared a global war on naval aviation. By focusing on terrorism instead of al Qaeda or radical Islam, Bush elevated a specific kind of assault to a position that shaped American global strategy, which left the United States strategically off-balance.
Obama may have clarified the nomenclature, but he left in place a significant portion of the imbalance, which is an obsession with the threat of terrorist attacks. As we consider presidential options in the coming decade, it appears imperative that we clear up just how much of a threat terrorism actually presents and what that threat means for U.S. policy. — George Friedman

If the American people had known the truth - that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other top administration officials knew that the Benghazi attack was an al-Qaida terrorist attack from the get-go - and yet lied and covered this fact up - Mitt Romney might very well be president. These documents also point to connection between the collapse in Libya and the ISIS war - and confirm that the U.S. knew remarkable details about the transfer of arms from Benghazi to Syrian jihadists. — Tom Fitton

The reality is that terrorists can attack any time at any minute, 24 hours a day, using a variety of techniques, in any place at all. And it's not possible to defend in every place, against every technique, against every conceivable approach. It means that you can't stop every terrorist attack. Innocent men, women and children are going to be killed if terrorists are determined to do it. — Donald Rumsfeld

We will be safer from terrorist attack only when we have earned the respect of all other nations instead of their fear, respect for our values and not merely our weapons. — Theodore C. Sorensen

A terrorist attack is like a wasp sting. It may be very painful, but it does not kill the host. It only makes the host more determined to find the nest and destroy it. — Karlyle Tomms

There have been times during my life when I have wish to be a boy again, not to have the energy and perfect health of youth, but know once more the innocence and the delight in even the smallest of things that we often fail to feel full strength as the years drift by. What is easy to forget, however, until you apply yourself to the task of memory, is that childhood is a time of fear, as well; some of those fears are reasonable, others irrational and inspired by a sense of powerlessness in a world where often power over others seems to be what drives so many of our fellow human beings. In the swoon of childhood, the possibility of werewolves is as real as the school yard shooter, the idea of vampires as credible as the idea of a terrorist attack, the neighbor possessing paranormal talents as believable as a psychopath. — Dean Koontz

I smelled war on the horizon, with more deaths and trouble to come
Bombing of the Twin Towers
From Rape of a Nation by Sara Niles — Sara Niles

The threat of a terrorist attack in Moscow is real enough - a constant beneath the surface. But another, more palpable form of intimidation stalks the city's streets. It targets those from the Caucasus - no longer perpetrators but victims - as well as anyone of non-Slavic descent. This spectre is Russian nationalism, furiously asserting itself. — Harding Luke

Public service announcement: In case of a terrorist attack, bottled water and duct tape are not going to do a damn thing. So do what Homeland Security Dir. Tom Ridge does: Get really drunk, and pick up a hooker. — David Letterman

Given that a few days ago we had a terrible accident, a tragic terrorist attack in Barajas, in Madrid, I would like to propose to you that we show our complete condemnation, our most intense revulsion, and that we show profound solidarity with the victims. — Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

The wort terrorist attack in American history also brought out the best in our country ... We are United as Americans. — Barack Obama

We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term. — Dana Perino

ISIL is not the JV team. I cannot stress enough that there's a terrorist army in Syria and Iraq that wants to attack the homeland and we're not doing anything about it. So how do you defeat the ideology? Build up others? You reject Rand Paul. — Rand Paul

When the September 11th attacks happened, only about a year later, the crypto community was holding its breath because here was a time when we just had an absolutely horrific terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and if the NSA and the FBI were unhappy with anything, Congress was ready to pass any law they wanted. The PATRIOT Act got pushed through very, very quickly with bipartisan support and very, very little debate, yet it didn't include anything about encryption. — Matt Blaze

If the Poe Lock were ever rendered unusable due to a terrorist attack or natural disaster, it would halt commerce on the Great Lakes and these industries would be helpless. — Bart Stupak

Clearly we must do everything we can to protect our country from the serious potential of another terrorist attack, but we can and must do so in a way that also protects the constitutional rights of the American people and maintains our free society. We can do that without living in an Orwellian world where the government and private corporations know every telephone call that we make, every website we visit, every place we go. — Bernie Sanders

Nickie was so tired of the Crisis. It had been going on now for months. On TV and the radio, it was all you ever heard about: how Our Side and Their Side had come almost, but not quite, to the point of declaring all-out war. In the last week or so, the radio had started broadcasting frightening instructions every hour: In the event of a declaration of war or a large-scale terrorist attack, cities will be evacuated in an orderly fashion ... . Residents will be directed to safe locations ... . Citizens should remain calm ... . — Jeanne DuPrau

Jerry Falwell knows who caused the terrorist attack on America: the ACLU. "The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this," he declared on the 700 Club, because, he explained, the ACLU, abetted by the federal courts is responsible for "throwing God out of the public square (and) the public schools."This is a familiar charge and a false one. God is still present in the public schools, where students are free to pray, alone or in groups, so long as their prayers aren't officially sponsored and don't infringe on anyone's freedom not to pray. — Wendy Kaminer

We always knew how to honor fallen soldiers. They were killed for our sake, they went out on our mission. But how are we to mourn a random man killed in a terrorist attack while sitting in a cafe? How do you mourn a housewife who got on a bus and never returned? — A. B. Yehoshua

I never know what I'm going to do for the Post next. Two weeks ago I had a piece on Homeland Security. This is one of my pig ongoing projects. How unprepared we are for a terrorist attack. — Sally Quinn

Maybe John Kerry does not know - but I am happy to explain it to him - that my commitment to withdraw the troops goes back before the tragic, dramatic terrorist attack. — Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

We are always just one successful terrorist attack away from a nuclear disaster — Fred Thompson

According to Robert Pape, who has created a database of every suicide terrorist attack in the last hundred years, suicide bombing is a nationalist response to military occupation by a culturally alien democratic power.62 It's a response to boots and tanks on the ground - never to bombs dropped from the air. It's a response to contamination of the sacred homeland. — Jonathan Haidt

There was never a recorded Iraqi terrorists in the last 20 years in any terrorist attack. There were no terrorists in Iraq until we invaded it. — Jodie Evans

Even the infamous 2002 Bali bombing mastermind, Imam Samudra from the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group Jamaah Islamiyah, funded his attack in which more than 200 people were murdered with the $150,000 he obtained by hacking into Western bank accounts and credit lines. Samudra was technologically savvy and while in prison wrote an autobiographical manifesto containing a chapter titled "Hacking, Why Not?" In the book, Samudra shared his hacking and "carding" techniques with his disciples, encouraging them "to take the holy war into cyberspace by attacking U.S. computers, with the particular aim of committing credit card fraud, called 'carding,' " to fund operations. — Marc Goodman

If we had a terrorist attack, the way the people respond is going to determine whether that attack is just a tragedy or whether that attack becomes an all-out disaster. — Patrick J. Kennedy

There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack. — Molly Ivins

Highly-automated tools and techniques cannot be easily applied to the much more difficult problem of detecting and preempting a terrorist attack, and success in doing so may not be possible at all. — Julia Angwin

The end of suffering happens in this very moment,
whether you're watching a terrorist attack or doing the dishes.
And compassion begins at home.
Because I don't believe my thoughts, sadness can't exist.
That's how I can go to the depths of anyone's suffering,
if they invite me, and take them by the hand and walk them out of it into the sunlight of reality.
I've taken that walk myself. — Byron Katie

One of the essential elements of government responsibility is to communicate effectively to the American people, especially in time of a potential terrorist attack or a natural disaster. — Vito Fossella

One of the reasons I believe the spiritual door was opened for an attack against the United States of America is that the policy of our Government has been to ask the Israelis, and demand it with pressure, not to retaliate in a significant way against the terrorist strikes that have been launched against them. — James Inhofe

Task complete. Shut it down."
Unable to comply, the computer responded.
"I finished."
Inaccurate statement. Previous command stipulated all listed reports and evaluations must be complete before system rest. This command by Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, priority basis, can only be countermanded at her order by fire, terrorist attack, alien invasion or an open and active case requiring her attention ...
Jesus, had she really programmed that? "I changed my mind."
Previous command specifies changes of mind, fatigue, boredom, and other lame excuses not acceptable for countermand ...
"Bite me," Eve muttered. — J.D. Robb

I told [Hu Jintao] I stayed awake worrying about another terrorist attack on America. He quickly replied that his biggest concern was creating twenty-five million new jobs a year. I found his answer fascinating, It was honest. It showed he worried about the impact of disaffected, unemployed masses. It explained his government's policies in resource-rich places like Iran and Africa. And it was a signal that he was a practical leader focused inward, not an ideologue likely to stir up trouble abroad. — George W. Bush

More warnings issued by all branches of the government today that another terrorist attack is imminent. We're not sure when, we're not sure where, just that it is coming. Who is attacking us now, the cable company? — Jay Leno

The federal government has a responsibility to protect all Americans from potential terrorist attack. — Bob Etheridge

So it's Alice's fault that I never invested the appropriate time worrying about infertility. I never insured against it by worrying about it. I won't make that mistake again. Now every day I remember to worry that Ben will die in a car accident on his way to work. I make sure I worry at regular intervals about Alice's children - ticking off every terrible childhood disease: meningitis, leukemia. Before I go to sleep at night I worry that someone I love will die in the night. Every morning I worry that somebody I know will be killed in a terrorist attack that day. That means the terrorists have won, Ben tells me. He doesn't understand that I'm fighting off the terrorists by worrying about them. It's my own personal War on Terror. That — Liane Moriarty

A terrorist can attack any time, any place using any technique and you can't defend everywhere against every technique at every moment. — Donald Rumsfeld

What makes us the strongest tribe on the continent is the fact that a group that opposes these values
a group that would have mankind remain in the new dark ages
is permitted to grow, permitted to exist ... and, after it becomes a violent terrorist organization, is allowed to live on it own lands, taken out of the lands of those it has attacked and continues to attack!" He had to stop speaking then
the applause was louder than even his amplified voice. "They expect that fear will drive us to become like them ... closed-minded, blind, angry. Our society will remain open and free so long as I am standing upright," he continued, once the applause died down. — Lia Habel

And so every one of us in the FBI, I don't care if it's a file clerk someplace or an agent there or a computer specialist, understands that our main mission is to protect the public from another September 11, another terrorist attack. — Robert Mueller

London in the '70s was a pretty catastrophic dump, I can tell you. We had every kind of industrial trouble; we had severe energy problems; we were under constant terrorist attack from Irish terrorist groups who started a bombing campaign in English cities; politics were fantastically polarized between left and right. — Ian McEwan

The fact that we have not had a terrorist attack in this country in the last six years is not a cause for complacency or a time to celebrate the end of the struggle. The threat is not going away. The enemy has not lost interest ... Fundamentally, we're in a struggle about ideology. Terrorists want to remake the world in their own image and it is the image that is intolerant of the kinds of institutions that we cherish. — Michael Chertoff

If you ask which of the scenarios I think is most dangerous, though, I will give a different answer. In that form of the question, I regard a nuclear attack, terrorist-generated or otherwise, as the most threatening combination of likelihood and long-term damage to modern life today. — John L. Casti

his book On Nuclear Terrorism, Levi laid out all the things that would have to go right for a terrorist nuclear attack to succeed, noting, "Murphy's Law of Nuclear Terrorism: What can go wrong might go wrong."278 Mueller counts twenty obstacles on the path and notes that even if a terrorist group had a fifty-fifty chance of clearing every one, the aggregate odds of its success would be one in a million. — Steven Pinker

Apparently the only thing worse than a terrorist attack, is a gay man stopping it! — Jon Stewart

The thing is, is that every terrorist attack we've had since 9/11 has been legal immigration. — Ted Cruz

States like these [Iran, Iraq, North Korae], and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic. — George W. Bush

The president's very right about one thing: When you have a disaster of that scale, whether it be natural or a terrorist attack, there's only one part of our entire government, state or local, that is equipped to handle it, and that's the U.S. military. — Warren Rudman

The idea of a terrorist attack that assaults innocent human beings in a building or a mall or a restaurant is bad enough. Yet the terrorist mind that looks at a passenger plane and sees the fuel and the intensity of the blast, and sees the rocket engines that will carry it into the heart of destruction like a cruise missile, but who does not see the humanity of one single soul on that airplane, is the chilling truth of what we're up against. — Alan Keyes

Who can ever forget George W. Bush, in the days and weeks after the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, exhorting people not to be afraid, to get out and do the right thing, the patriotic thing, the one thing that could get the economy moving forward again: start shopping. — Richard Florida

We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the Government ignoring such warnings. — George Galloway

Osama bin Laden did not attack on September 11 because there was a dearth of American diplomats willing to talk with him in the Hindu Kush. He did not think America denied its Muslim citizens the right to worship freely. He did not think his native Saudi Arabia was impoverished or short of lebensraum. Instead, he recognized that a series of Islamic terrorist assaults against U.S. interests over two decades had met with what he would judge as insignificant reprisals. And he therefore concluded, in rather explicit and public fashion, that the supposedly decadent Westerners would never fight, whatever the provocation - — Victor Davis Hanson

I fully support President Bush's decision to strike Al Qaeda's terrorist network. Now more than ever, we must stand united as a nation and support our President and our military. It is important to remember that this carefully targeted response is not an attack on a religion, nor a nation, but an attack on terrorism. In Congress, we will continue to work with the White House to do what's needed to bring justice to those who committed the heinous and evil attacks of September 11. — Tom Harkin

In a brave new world, a post-September 11 world, anyone is going to make certain mistakes. The mistakes that have been made on homeland security, on protecting our Nation from another terrorist attack, are mistakes of omission. We are simply not doing enough. — Chuck Schumer

But in this country, while you have to be competent to pull off a terrorist attack, you don't have to be competent to cause terror. All you need to do is start plotting an attack and - regardless of whether or not you have a viable plan, weapons or even the faintest clue - the media will aid you in terrorizing the entire population. — Bruce Schneier

We in US need active intelligence: people being on the streets, people being able to stop and ask questions of individuals that they suspect to put it together. Why wouldn't we be wanting to get some information that could actually prevent a terrorist attack, especially since we have so many individuals fighting that have passports coming back and spreading jihad. — Kimberly Guilfoyle

The shows she'd watch on the Discovery Channel hadn't prepared her for a kidnapping. Terrorist attack? Yes. Defending her home? Yes. Kidnapped by a police officer? No. She'd have to write to the network about that. — Nichole Severn

This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack ... We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. — Ann Coulter

The man responsible for keeping Americans safe from another terrorist attack on American soil for nearly seven years now will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents. — Ann Coulter

Americans rightly asked, if this is the way our government responds to a natural disaster it knew about days in advance, how would it respond to a surprise terrorist attack? How would it respond to an earthquake? — Russ Carnahan

Susan Abdallah, a Palestinian, knows the recipe for making a terrorist:
Deprive him of food and water.
Surround his home with the machinery of war.
Attack him with all means at all times, especially at night.
Demolish is home, uproot his farmland, kill his loved ones.
Congratulations: you have created an army of suicide bombers. — Eduardo Galeano

Outside events can change a presidential campaign, a president, and the history of the nation: the Iranian hostage crisis, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the downing of the helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia, the suicide attack on the USS Cole, and, of course, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. — Mark McKinnon

The President faced the microphone with a look of utter helplessness, like a man reading My Pet Goat to a group of pre-schoolers as a major terrorist attack happens elsewhere. — Mike Resnick

The attack on Americans in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 is a stark reminder that our nation must remain vigilant in protecting our citizens from the threat of Al-Qaeda and similar extremist terrorist entities around the world. — Bob Corker

I want my glasses."
"No." The absent way he said it, as if she didn't have a choice, set off an odd shimmer in her bones. He regarded her soberly. "You're scared without them? More than being bound to a table?"
"I'm trying not to think about bondage," she said grumpily.
He grinned, swift and wonderful.
"And yes, I'm scared. What if something happened, like a fire?" She wouldn't be able to find her way out. "Or a terrorist attack. Or zombies."
He chuckled. "I do like submissives with imagination. — Cherise Sinclair

The FBI's principal priority right now is protecting the United States against another terrorist attack. — Robert Mueller

The fact that we haven't faced another major terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11 is a very significant achievement, and one that's easy to forget - it's the dog that doesn't bark. — Alex Berenson

So in many ways, the bombing at the end of this year and the terrorist attack of last year in Peshawar have bookended both those years in a very unfortunate way. But at a bigger picture since, the impression in Pakistan is that things are actually improving on the terrorism front quite dramatically. — Mohsin Hamid

On a Tuesday, September 11th, 1973, we had the military coup in Chile that forced me to leave my country eventually. And then, on a Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, we had the terrorist attack in the United States. — Isabel Allende

Shock, confusion, fear, anger, grief, and defiance. On Sept. 11, 2001, and for the three days following the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, President George W. Bush led with raw emotion that reflected the public's whipsawing stages of acceptance. — Ron Fournier

Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it. — Timothy Snyder

The NYPD has too urgent a mission and too few officers for us to waste time and resources on broad, unfocused surveillance. We have a responsibility to protect New Yorkers from violent crime or another terrorist attack - and we uphold the law in doing so. — Raymond Kelly

But I do think it's unwise, and it - to build a mosque at the site where 3,000 Americans lost their lives as a result of a terrorist attack. And I think to me it demonstrates that the - that Washington, the White House, the administration, the President himself seems to be disconnected from the mainstream of America. — John Cornyn

beyond their right - and now they would be made to pay for it. Envy was being acted out, as never before.'62 It led to the murder of six million Jews in the Second World War. Today, I find envy laced through the statements of European and Indian intellectuals about America. Arundhati Roy's essay after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington is an example. Like many anti-American intellectuals writing in the days after the attack, Roy claimed that it was the direct result of American foreign policy - the implication being that America somehow deserved what had happened. There is widespread anti-American sentiment in the world which regards the United States as arrogant, indifferent to human suffering, consumerist, and contemptuous of international law. Much of this is probably correct, but I find that some of it is inspired by envy of America's success. — Gurcharan Das

Recall that Hillary Clinton was all for toppling [Moammar] Gadhafi then didn't listen to her own people on the ground. And then of course, when she lied about the terrorist attack in Benghazi, she invited more terrorist attacks. — Carly Fiorina

Americans are about four times as likely to drown in their bathtub as they are to die in a terrorist attack. — Anonymous

Radical Islamist extremists surely hope that an attack on Iraq will kill many people and destroy much of the country, providing recruits for terrorist actions. — Noam Chomsky

We want to look at how we would respond because, as hard as we work to prevent terrorist attacks here North America, if we have a catastrophic terrorist attack, it is the military that is going to have to go in at the request of civilian authorities. — Paul Cellucci

Russell Defreitas plotted to commit a terrorist attack that he hoped would rival 9/11. — Loretta Lynch

The department was set up primarily to protect us from another terrorist attack from Islamic terrorists, and yet they talk about everything but that. — Peter T. King

America will be far safer if we reduce the chances of a terrorist attack in one of our cities than if we diminish the civil liberties of our own people. — Nancy Pelosi

In survey after survey, people report that the greatest dangers they face are, in this order: terrorist attack, plane crashes and nuclear accidents. This despite the fact that these three combined have killed fewer people in the past half-century than car accidents do in any given year. — Will Self