Karan Mahajan Quotes

Terrorists are not 100 feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill.

I told you I'm not going to criticize my successor. I'll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don't believe that persuasion isn't going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists to change their mind.

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.

In the latter half of the last century the impact of the expanding influence of Western culture and economic system brought about in China a severe conflict.

The news that comes out of Pakistan is always geared toward terrorism and fundamentalism. But when you give people freedom of expression and the freedom to go out and be social and to express themselves, you will see a change. I see that coming about in my country.

The way the terrorist is trained to operate, especially the suicide terrorists, makes punishment and the threat of punishment far less valuable to those who would prevent the crime.

It's always seemed odd to me that after a group of terrorists commits a vile and odious deed they rush messages to the public to claim credit for it.

If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

The fact that the Moslem fundamentalist terrorists have these odd beliefs doesn’t mean that they are stupid.

Terrorists cannot win unless they affect the way we think and act.

A nation of citizens who will not panic. That’s what the terrorists fear.

Terrorist groups always want to believe that they represent a general aggrieved group far larger than they really do.

Americans don’t do a good job, and shouldn’t do a good job, at separating the message from the messenger, when the messenger is killing people.

You do the best you can … if you make a mistake, you make a mistake.

Refugees are not terrorists. They are the victims of terrorists .... In my experience people with terrorist intent do not choose the reugee route to enter a country. There is too much scruiteny and takes too long. They use ofher ways.

I've been interested in terrorism from the very beginning. My first novel is about that, too, and I think one reason I've been so interested in terrorism is because I have a deep interest - one of my deepest interests - in image culture and how it works. And terrorism is an epiphenomenon of image culture.

All I've ever wanted to do is move the needle on popular culture.

If a writer doesn't do anything but give a new word to his language and, from there, maybe to other languages, I think that writer redefines the world.

The discussion of 'V for Vendetta' - on Pinocchio Theory in particular - has been far more interesting than the film deserved. Yes, there is a certain frission in seeing a major Hollywood movie refusing to unequivocally condemn terrorism, but the political analysis in the film (as in the original comic) is really rather threadbare.

Naturally a direct comparison of terrorist and novelist is complete nonsense. But there was once a time when the novelist also had some influence on how his contemporaries thought, the way they saw the world, the way they lived.

Can you imagine writers influencing things in America? Can you imagine a writer in England influencing? Absolutely not. And in France? It used to be, but no more - absolutely not. France used to, at least, have writers as diplomats, but not any more.

They [international terrorists] are after us because we're a Christian nation.

How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?

Although I studied Dante's Inferno as a student, it wasn't until recently, while researching in Florence, that I came to appreciate the enduring influence of Dante's work on the modern world.

The translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years.