Hamza Yusuf Quotes

Engagement is not appeasement. Engagement is not surrender.

Our experience shows that security does not lie in weapons or fences or armies.

Terror can never be defeated by force alone.

I am certain that we need a solution completely separate from military intervention.

What you need to do in conflict resolution is to bring the people who believe that the answer to their political ambitions will be achieved through violence into a frame of mind that they accept that their political ambitions will be delivered by politics.

You will not have to make war there only with arms, but also with public opinion

It is our duty to persuade the nations of the world, in whatever way that we can, to settle their differences in some other way. (Other than war)

Nothing is more important than to stop neutralist talk wherever we can by whatever means we can.

Desperate times require desperate measures. Violence is not only the answer. It is the only answer.

Compromise is not such ignoble and deplorable a thing as we generally think. It is rather an indispensable factor in the political strategy. Any nation that rises against the oppressors is bound to fail in the beginning and to gain partial reforms during the medieval period of its struggle through compromises.

I wanted to demonstrate that Deathstroke does not need to solve every problem with his fists.

You can't win a battle against an idea with bombs, with guns, or militarily.

Without compromise repression would be defeated. Just as some cancers feed on hormones, compromise becomes the hormone of oppression.

We must be capable of speaking a language of peace, but not one of surrender.

I don't have much time for real violence at all. I think there are infinitely better ways of changing the world than using violence. Sitting round a table talking is a pretty good start.

The 20th century was the century of war and blood. The 21st century is the century of dialogue.

I urge everyone to be patient and reasonable and I warn against shooting from the hip in the truest sense of the term. Pressure and dialogue are needed.

We have to choose between dialogue and utter devastation.

You think this is going to work? This peaceful summit thing?” “Sure,” I said. After a second, I added, “Probably.” “Probably?” “Maybe,” I said. “We’re down to maybe now?” I shrugged. “We’ll see.

Peace is only possible when one of the warring sides takes the first step, the hazardous initiative, the risk of opening up dialogue, and decides to make the gesture that will lead not only to an armistice but to peace.

For peace do not hope; to be just you must break it. Still work for the minute and not for the year.

So long as human history continues, we will face the perennial challenge of realizing, maintaining and strengthening peace through dialogue, of making dialogue the sure and certain path to peace. We must uphold and proclaim this conviction without cease, whatever coldly knowing smiles or cynical critiques may greet us.

It's very dramatic when two people come together to work something out. It's easy to take a gun and annihilate your opposition, but what is really exciting to me is to see people with differing views come together and finally respect each other.

I wasn't born to be a fighter. The causes I have fought for have invariably been causes that should have been gained by a delicate suggestion. Since they never were, I made myself into a fighter.

You must fight others, but through peace, and through dialogue, and through education.