H. L. Mencken Quotes

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

Do you call the people in Los Angeles in the nineties - do you call them rebels or opposition ? They are rebels. They are not rebels even, they are beheading. This opposition, opposing country or government, by beheading ? By barbecuing heads ? By eating the hearts of your victim ? Is that opposition ? What do you call the people who attacked the two towers on the 11th of September ? Opposition ? Even if they're not Americans, I know this, but some of them I think have nationality - I think one of them has American nationality. Do you call him opposition or terrorist ?

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

When fundamentalism comes to kill, it can kill with the language - the Apostle James says this, not me - and even with a knife, no?

Martyrs, martyrs, martyrs,... we want a million martyrs to march on Jerusalem.

Hamas is ISIS, and ISIS is Hamas. They're branches of the same tree. People who wantonly rocket our cities and want to conduct mass killings. And when they can, they murder children, teenagers, shoot them in the head. Throw people from the sixth floor, their own people. ... They're the enemies of peace, they're the enemies of Israel, they're the enemies of all civilized countries. And I believe they're the enemies of the Palestinians themselves.

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

If you just took everyone in the BNP and everyone who votes for them and shot them in the back of the head, there would be a brighter future for us all.

By pumping up hyper-partisanship, our country (America) is playing with forces that can easily get out of control. We are giving purpose and cover - and sometimes a sense of purpose - to the crazy among us. We are encouraging a culture of extremism

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.

I know one or two things about fanaticism and death, and I reject them.

No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are recruited from the martyrs not quite beheaded. Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.

Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Terror was brought to many countries on his direct orders and in his name, against men, women and children, Christians and Muslims. Osama Bin Laden claimed to be acting in the name of Islam, but in reality he made a mockery of the basic values of his and all other religions.

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

It [destroying Twin Towers] was a leap into another realm - the realm of crazy abstractions and mythological generalities, involving people who have hijacked Islam for their own purposes. It's important not to fall into that trap and to try to respond with a metaphysical retaliation of some sort.

Extremism means borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.

Only one more indispensable massacre of Capitalists or Communists or Fascists or Christians or Heretics, and there we are in the Golden Future.

The idea that you can separate jihadi terrorism from Islam is exactly what got us in the mess we are today, with 65 million refugees around the world and with ISIS controlling territory in multiple countries.

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.

I'm going to tell you, what's good for al Qaeda is good for the Democratic Party in this country today.

We've had mass shootings in the United States in the part of violent antiabortion protesters, in the part of violent pro-ISIS militants. The trick and the trap and the horror is not faith, Scott. I don't think the trap and the horror is fanaticism.

Fundamentalism is not bred in poverty. There are plenty of poor countries in the world that don't have violence because amid the poverty there is a kind of justice and in some countries a democracy.

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.