David Horsey Quotes

I don't think people by nature are extremists. You will never find a population of extremists. Extremists have existed throughout the centuries on all religions. And what happens is, extremists start to have more leverage when the situation is bad.

Unless Gingrich and Dole and the Republicans say, ‘Am I inflaming a bunch of nuts?’, you know we're going to have some more events (like the Oklahoma City bombing). I am absolutely certain the harsher rhetoric of the Gingriches and the Doles … creates a climate of violence in America.

When ideas lead to ideology, that's a very dangerous thing. Ideology then leads to creating the image of an enemy, and it leads to the murder and massacre.

It's hard to listen to the news every day and have everyone saying you're the Antichrist.

I think the first decade of this century is going to be remembered as a time of extremism.

Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.

I've always been very interested in political violence. When I finished high school, I did a small dissertation about political violence and fascism in Italy.

The uncertainty of the danger belongs to the essence of terrorism.

There are a lot of people whose livelihoods depend on keeping lots of conservatives terrified and ill-informed. The groups that exist to raise funds raise more funds when they endorse the crazier candidate.

I'm not frightened about terrorism. I'm frightened about the roots of what we call terrorism.

Liberals need to take the advice they routinely give to conservatives: that there are consequences to their divisive rhetoric, and that in their attempts to score political points, they are also inciting violence.

Jihad will continue even if I am not around.

I think America is going to have to think through whether it wants to uplift the political dialogue or advance an approach that divides and, frankly, can lead to violence.

Cults, or related social movements such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, result in massive military expenses.

The growing menace of violent extremism and outright barbarism is our common threat today.

In El Paso, the people are homicidal but orthodox.

The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millenialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days…. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated—if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.

Terrorists have hijacked our religion.

A democracy becomes ungovernable if a substantial portion of the population lives in an alternative reality…. How do you have a rational conversation about President Obama’s policies of he believes that Obama is a spy for Iran.

It is a dangerously short step from frustration to fanaticism.

It would be a dreadful calamity to see the nation divided into two parties, one containing the bulk of the property owners and conservative people, the other the bulk of the wageworkers and the less prosperous people generally; each party insisting on demanding much that is wrong, and each party sullen and angered by real and fancied grievances..

It's amazing how easily people are led to fury and chaos. Unhappy people with guns are not going to make this country great.

I've seen a lot of political violence in my life. I know what it looks like. I know what it smells like. I know what motivates young men to do it. I've talked to them about it. I know what victims feel like, you know? I know the abominable effect it has on politics. I know how intractable it is.

Research shows that if people are talking and listening to like-minded others, they become more dogmatic, more unified, and more extreme. Personalized Facebook experiences are a breeding ground for misunderstanding and miscommunication across political lines and, ultimately, for extremism.

Hatred, anger, and violence can destroy us: the politics of polarization is dangerous.