Patrick J. Kennedy Quotes

All terrorism is theater.

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act. And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.

The purpose of terrorism lies not just in the violent act itself. It is in producing terror. It sets out to inflame, to divide, to produce consequences which they then use to justify further terror.

The uncertainty of the danger belongs to the essence of terrorism.

The purpose behind terrorism is to instill fear in people - the fear that electrical power, for instance, will be taken away or the transportation system will be taken down.

Let us never forget that terrorism at its heart, at its evil heart, is a psychological war. It endeavors to break the spirit and the resolve of those it attacks by creating a lose-lose situation.

Terrorism always has the advantage of surprise.

Fundamentally, terrorism is about public relations.

Terrorism is a strategy of provocation.

What the terrorists want is to scare us and fill us with dread.

Putting fear into people is the principal goal of terrorists, and they have been successful.

The people who have the power want you scared. They want you walking around paralyzed by the notion that you could die at any moment.

True terrorism, you know, weaponized fear. In defense of ourselves, we're fighting - actively fighting something else. But if you're going to fight terrorism, to me, you fight the root causes of terrorism.

In a sense, terrorism blossomed in the advent of television. Television promotes terrorism in religion and in politics.

A terrorist network that believes a nation so tested will fold under pressure of a few horrific acts may capture its attention, but will not achieve its submission.

Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.

Surely, it's one of terrorism's intended effects, to literally stun our morale, to blow up strength and will along with buildings, and the reaction is hard to counter.

You can compel fear. You can even make someone feel they're in love if they're isolated and dependent for long enough. But laughter is free.

Torture is a very humiliating experience. The goal is not to obtain information but to punish and break you so that you won't do anything against the authorities. You are made an example to others so that they will be too terrified to do anything either.

The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize.

The real damage from terrorist attacks doesn't come from the explosion. The real damage is done after the explosion, by the victims, who repeatedly and determinedly attack themselves, giving over reason in favor of terror... Terrorism is about magnifying one mediagenic act of violence into one hundred billion acts of terrorized authoritarian idiocy.

What we wanted to do was have a terror campaign to terrify Arbenz particularly to terrify his troops, much as the German Stuka bombers terrified the population of Holland at the onset of World War II.

The world around us is constantly changing, and so do the threats that we face.

I'm not for one second condoning the actions of terrorists at all, but I do think there's a kind of terrorism that the media carries out on its own citizens, certainly in this country - and it's fear.

The concept of the terrorists is to plunge our country into division.