Beji Caid Essebsi Quotes

The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular.

Terrorism and its executioners have their own agenda, entirely independent of the popular will, of democratic considerations or institutions, or of the aspirations and desires of the community they claim to represent. They are defeated, not by the operation of some mystical force called ‘popular will’, but by the force of arms. Their activities are not some convenient substitute for the ballot box; they are an absolute rejection of every value integral to democracy.

Terrorism is only a problem in failed states with significant Muslim populations.

I've always been very interested in political violence. When I finished high school, I did a small dissertation about political violence and fascism in Italy.

Terrorism seems to be the ugly twin of democracy. We need to learn to live with it because we are vulnerable to it.

In a democracy you cannot bring a bomb to advance your political aims.

Unless Gingrich and Dole and the Republicans say, ‘Am I inflaming a bunch of nuts?’, you know we're going to have some more events (like the Oklahoma City bombing). I am absolutely certain the harsher rhetoric of the Gingriches and the Doles … creates a climate of violence in America.

Both sides in Syria are bad. One side is a brutal dictator, and the other includes Islamists and terrorists who are dangerous already and who would be brutal in power if given the chance.

Homegrown terrorists are a real problem for even the most modern, democratic societies.

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.

The challenge is to lend conviction even to the voices which advocate views I find personally abhorrent, whether they are political Islamists or officers justifying a coup.

Transnational terrorism, in the form of the Salafi Jihadist movement, is fundamentally a function of globalization.

All terrorism is theater.

Terrorism is resorted to for practical reasons because there is no other tool available. And those who use terrorism, and then subsequently become the targets of terrorism, understand its power and how difficult it is to counter it. Not just militarily. But especially in terms of international perception.

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

Europe has a long and tragic history of mostly domestic terrorism.

In my fight against terrorism, to me, the biggest terrorist is Obama, and the United States of America.

The more democratic and open a society is, the more it's exposed to terrorism. The more a country is free, not governed by a police regime, the more it risks hijackings or massacres like the ones that took place for many years in Italy and Germany and other parts of Europe.

There are works of fiction which seek to explain jihadi terrorists as the militant wing of Amnesty International. I don't buy that.

It is frightening that in recent years such an increase has occurred in acts of terrorism, which have even reached peaceful countries such as ours. And as a 'remedy', more and more security forces are established to protect the lives of individual men and women.

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

Abbas is on his way to becoming a professor of terrorism. After denying the Holocaust in his doctoral thesis, he now claims that Hamas is not a terrorist organization.

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

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

Terrorism has become the systematic weapon of a war that knows no borders or seldom has a face.