Yasser Arafat Quotes

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.

It’s the confrontation with modernity that produces terrorism.

My father believed in armed struggle.

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.

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.

It is a struggle for the minds of the people... No cause justifies recourse to terrorism.

We must find out where the roots of terrorism lie.

Who defines terrorists? Today's terrorist is tomorrow's friend.

Right-wing extremism is all about patience. That is, until it makes its move, and then it is sudden and explosive.

Bloodshed and disorder are not necessarily evil in themselves, if resorted to in a noble cause.

It is wrong to claim, as some do, that the motivation of al-Qaeda and its allies is some desire to seek justice in the Middle East ... Al-Qaeda and its allies have no clear demands for the Middle East. The only common thread in their approach is a violent and destructive opposition to democracy in any form. They find democracy in Palestine abhorrent and seek to destroy it

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

Desperate times require desperate measures. Violence is not only the answer. It is the only answer.

The humanitarian in theory is the terrorist in action.

Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more.

It's always been hard for me to understand how we say people who support Osama Bin Laden or someone else like him – who are willing to give their lives to destroy the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia – how we can describe those people as people who hated freedom. It seems to me that their definition of freedom might be different than ours, but to oppose a dictatorship, one must want freedom in some kind of way.

Intellectuals cannot be good revolutionaries; they are just good enough to be assassins.

I don't encourage socialists or anarchists to accept falsehoods, in particular, to see revolutionary potential where there is none.

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.

Revolutionaries are more formalistic than conservatives.

I was a militant.

These terrorists aren't trying to kill us because we offended them. They attack us because they want to impose their view of the world on as many people as they can, and America is standing in their way.

If you look at terrorists, they really have no sense of humor.

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.

Al Qaeda's message that violence, terrorism and extremism are the only answer for Arabs seeking dignity and hope is being rejected each day in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and throughout the Arab lands.