Anthony de Mello Quotes

I think that anybody can become a terrorist. That's my point of view. But, not everybody can actually kill. In order to reach that level, you have to be deeply convinced.

Not to mention the fact that of course terrorists hate freedom. I think they do hate. But believe me, I don't think they sit there abstractly hating freedom.

Senseless violence is, almost by definition, hard to understand. Not that I can understand terrorists who kill from hate, but at least we can identify a reason - a terrifying one, to be sure, grounded in a violent belief system - for what they do. Two gangs go to war. Extremists kill in the name of belief.

Terror … is often the result of giving politics a sacred, absolute dimension.

Extremism and terrorism are based on lack of hope and an ideology that takes advantage of that.

History proves that those who seed extremist ideologies reap a bitter harvest.

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

It's time to "stop being ambivalent." ... They (groups like the Islamic State) have no ideology beyond violence and chaos and the slaughter of innocent people.

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.

It is an ideology born out of hatred and its adherents belong to no religion, culture or civilisation.

A fanatic's willingness to kill or be killed in the service of a cause cannot prove the rightness of that cause.

Terrorism is based on two major pillars: One is injustice, and the other is a certainty of attitude, the notion that their version of the story is the correct one.

Hamas does not care about the lives of Palestinians. [They don't] care about the lives of Israelis or Americans. They don't care about their own lives. They consider dying for the sake of their ideology a way of worship.

Islam is against killing, terrorism, and murder. People who commit these acts in the name of Islam are wrong. And if I had a chance I would do something about it.

We have no intention of ignoring or appeasing history's latest gang of fanatics trying to murder their way to power.

I think the terrorists are just idiots.

Rather, like the anarchists of the last century, he didn't care if he was killed or not. They just wanted to be known. We found no trace of any conspiracy.

The Islamists will try to spoil everything for everyone.

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

Well, we can't afford blindness anymore. There are tens of thousands of thugs who loathe liberty and love death, and want to annihilate Western civilization.

Environmentalism is a form of pagan fundamentalism. These green wackos are fanatics like al-Quaida. Just like them.

Well, you got to remember, bin Laden killed 3,000 Americans and, in some ways, he and his ideology killed tens of thousands of his fellow Muslims, including Pakistanis. I understand that that was provocative and complicated for Pakistan, but only if you accept the idea that he was an acceptable member of Pakistani society.

I think what Osama bin Laden does is to take the fact that some peoples lack hope and lack opportunity, and twist it to his own ends.

If you are talking about terrorism, you need to sit down and understand what is making these people put dynamite around their waists and blow themselves up.

The attacks of September 11 - and subsequent acts of terror from London to Madrid to Fort Hood, Texas - embody the most repulsive of human instincts, the will to power at the price of the lives of others.