Robert Harris Quotes

At the end of the day we want to bring stability and hope to Iraq. That's the only way to defeat terrorism.

Democracies are poor breeding grounds for terrorism and war.

Our heroes are fighting to bring stability to the Middle East, and they have put pressure on all of the tyrannies of the Middle East. They have taken a stand against tyranny, against terrorists, and for the prospect of decent societies throughout that region.

Terrorism seems to be the ugly twin of democracy. We need to learn to live with it because we are vulnerable to it.

Trade creates jobs and lifts people out of poverty. And when that happens, societies stabilize and grow. And there is nothing like a stable society to fight terrorism and strengthen democracy, freedom and rule of law.

We need to be more careful, but more compassionate. We must strike, not deal with terrorists, but to broaden our understanding of the world outside our borders.

There are no globalized, youth-led, grassroots social movements advocating for democratic culture across Muslim-majority societies. There is no equivalent of Al-Qaeda without the terrorism.

The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear - and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.

No one in this body wants to see terrorism and the rule of force prevail in Iraq. Some on the other side say otherwise, but I believe they know better.

It’s the confrontation with modernity that produces terrorism.

If a people bent on violence and terrorism have free elections, they will elect leaders bent on violence and terrorism.

Commerce has not delivered us out of history’s passions, the World Wide Web has not cast aside blood and kin and faith.

This is not a clash of civilizations or religions, and it reaches far beyond Islam and America, on which efforts are being made to focus the conflict in order to create the delusion of a visible confrontation and a solution based upon force. There is indeed a fundamental antagonism here, but one that points past the specter of America (which is perhaps the epicenter, but in no sense the sole embodiment, of globalization) and the specter of Islam (which is not the embodiment of terrorism either) to triumphant globalization battling against itself.

Everything in the Middle East is connected to everything else

We are still waging Peloponnesian wars. Our control of the material world and our positive science have grown fantastically. But our very achievements turn against us, making politics more random and wars more bestial.

Managing diplomacy today is far more difficult than during the Cold War. Technology, jet travel, and a globalized economy make it possible for terrorists in a remote corner of Pakistan or Syria to plan a terrorist attack on Times Square.

Would Bill Gates or Steve Jobs have been considered above average 500 years ago? Who is to decide what is best?

Abroad, technological change will create even more disruption as the wave of acceleration engulfs societies that have not yet come to terms with the social demands of industrialization, let alone more recent technological change. Mass disorientation can become the source of both national aggression and non-state terrorism—aggression and terrorism made all the more devastating by access to weapons that are not only increasingly powerful but also deployable by ever smaller groups.

I think we should be very worried because, with technology, Boko Haram and other terrorists have become very mobile in all continents, not only in Africa but also in Europe, America, and Asia.

Israel, an embattled democracy, has been fighting terrorism for over 100 years.

As we talk with candour, we open the doors to new possibilities and new areas of cooperation in advance in democracy, in combating terrorism, in energy and environment, science and technology and international peacekeeping.

We were once told that the aeroplane had "abolished frontiers"; actually it is only since the aeroplane became a serious weapon that frontiers have become definitely impassable.

The evil of predatory global capitalism and empire has spawned the evil of terrorism

They [terrorists] have declared war on us and we need to have a serious strategy to destroy ISIS.

Israeli murderers are called "commandos," Arab commandos are called "terrorists."