Poul Anderson Quotes

Men love their ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it.

Only fanatics — in religion as well as in politics — can find a meaning in someone else’s death.

Senseless violence is, almost by definition, hard to understand. Not that I can understand terrorists who kill from hate, but at least we can identify a reason - a terrifying one, to be sure, grounded in a violent belief system - for what they do. Two gangs go to war. Extremists kill in the name of belief.

Men will die for an opinion as soon as for anything else.

It is an ideology born out of hatred and its adherents belong to no religion, culture or civilisation.

Fanaticism must be put to sleep before it can be eradicated.

Fanaticism in many lands has surfaced as the greatest threat to the world. Indifference to its consequences would be a serious mistake.

I think that anybody can become a terrorist. That's my point of view. But, not everybody can actually kill. In order to reach that level, you have to be deeply convinced.

Once a person has killed other people on behalf of an ideology, he becomes rather devoted to it.

It is a struggle for the minds of the people... No cause justifies recourse to terrorism.

Terrorists are dangerous, not because they are immoral or amoral but because they are hyper moral. They justify their behavior in profoundly moral language.

Those prepared to die for the truth, as a rule make many others die with them, often before them, and at times instead of them.

You cannot defend a terrorist group just because they are fighting Daesh.

The rise of ISIS has exposed the darkest side of humanity - at times manifesting their violent ideology at our very doorsteps.

The terrorist isn't a problem because he doesn't conform; he's a problem because he does. It's what he conforms to that makes him dangerous.

The men who committed the atrocities of September 11 were certainly not "cowards," as they were repeatedly described in the Western media, nor were they lunatics in any ordinary sense. They were men of faith—perfect faith, as it turns out—and this, it must finally be acknowledged, is a terrible thing to be.

Terrorism is an example of that extreme madness. People blow themselves up just to kill others. Unconscious reaction to terrorism is equal madness.

Fanatics can justify practically any atrocity to themselves. The more untenable their position becomes, the harder they hold to it, and the worse the things they are willing to do to support it.

Ideology always paves the way toward atrocity.

They are fuelled by an ideology that itself is non-negotiable and forms a continuum that links peaceful, law-abiding but nevertheless intensely ideological Muslims at one end and murderous jihadists at the other.

There's nothing heroic about suicide bombers. They're mostly just dumb, brainwashed kids, stoned out of their minds.

It's my duty to fight those who have chosen to belong to the party of death, those who say they receive their orders from God somewhere and believe they have a duty to set the world on fire to achieve their own salvation.

The more fantastic an ideology or theology, the more fanatic its adherents.

Fanaticism is the greatest threat today. Literally, the 21st century threatened by fanatics, and we have fanatics in every religion, unfortunately, and what can we do against them? Words nothing else, I'm against violence but only words.

Terrorism is based on two major pillars: One is injustice, and the other is a certainty of attitude, the notion that their version of the story is the correct one.