Robert D. Kaplan Quotes

Poverty does not cause violence and terrorism. Lack of education does not cause terrorism.

… terrorism is a plague in our countries. It compounds our development problems.

What causes terrorism is disrespect, a lack of justice, and poverty.

Wherever you have weakening states and turmoil, you will have a fertile petri dish for terrorism.

Poverty does not make people terrorists, but terrorists can exploit the frustration it creates and use it as a breeding-ground for violent ideas.

Terrorism is partly linked to people who have no jobs in Pakistan.

It is conflict overall that mires people in poverty. That is the first law of development.

It’s the confrontation with modernity that produces terrorism.

Oligarchic societies may be able to achieve high rates of growth for a period of time, but continuing inequities in distribution lead to political instability and populism.

Terrorism often finds a home in states mired in civil war …

Political leaders still think things can be done through force, but that cannot solve terrorism. Backwardness is the breeding ground of terror, and that is what we have to fight.

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

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.

Look at the Palestinians with the huge, huge percentage of unemployed. What does that breed? Anyone who's unemployed in the world, you feel there's no meaning and there's a risk that you drift over to something desperate. Yes, we have to tackle the social problems as well.

Terrorism is a significant threat to peace and security, prosperity and people.

We must find out where the roots of terrorism lie.

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

I think it is absolutely correct to solve the problem of terrorism in Iraq and Syria and Libya.

If we have major geographic areas within our continent that have a tremendous lack of economic opportunity, we found that that is going to produce instability _ economic, political and social.

When it is over, if it is over, this war will have horrible consequences. Instead of having one Bin Laden, we will have 100 Bin Ladens.

The idea that we could live with another 20 years of stagnation in the Middle East that breeds this radicalism and breeds terrorism is, I think, just unacceptable- especially after September 11th.

The real threat comes from terrorism.

The deep problems that afflict the Middle East are not easy to fix, but they must be dealt with if we are not to see a son of ISIS, or even a grandson of ISIS, developing in the years to come.

It's important to produce economic development. Fundamentalism develops even faster with misery.

A large part of the problem, is that young people are being born into the world and growing up without much hope. And so, they become murderers, they become suicide bombers.