Kofi Annan Quotes

ISIS is a radical jihadist group that is increasingly sophisticated in its ability, for example, to radicalize American citizens, in its inability to exploit loopholes in our legal immigration system, in its ability to capture and hold territory in the Middle East, as I outlined earlier, in multiple countries.

We do not create terrorism by fighting the terrorists. We invite terrorism by ignoring them.

To a considerable extent we are faced by a technology arms race with terrorists. The communications revolution has made it easier for terrorist groups to reach out to vulnerable individuals with their violent extremist ideology and propaganda. It has also facilitated fundraising, recruitment and training.

Everyone is now a potential terrorist.

Islamist-jihadist terrorism-a plague that has spread to almost every corner of the world-creates painful dilemmas for the peoples and decision makers who confront it. Its rapid, shape-shifting advance has sometimes confounded efforts to comprehend its origins, motives, and aims. Its sophistication in exploiting liberal values poses challenges and difficulties for the Western world, and for liberal democratic states in general, in attaining effective and balanced counter-terrorism policies.

We don't tolerate terrorism. We go after the terrorists and those who support them and those who justify their actions.

Military strikes on Afghanistan will not prevent something this terrible from happening again, for the simple reason that bombs will not deter people who are unafraid of death and desire martyrdom.

Firmly believe that terrorism, in any shape or form, is against humanity. There should be zero tolerance towards terrorism.

Terrorism is a principal preoccupation in most of our international contacts.

We need to focus on radical Islamic terrorists and we need to stop them before they carry out acts of terror.

You look at [terrorists] faces, they look foreigners, but where are they coming from ? How precise this estimate is difficult to tell, but definitely the majority are Al-Qaeda.

Death is only a byproduct of terrorism.

Terrorism': the word that means nothing, yet justifies everything.

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.

Terrorism is not a cause; it is a crime.

Criminal and terrorist threats are morphing beyond traditional actors and tactics. We still have to worry about things like an al-Qaida cell plotting a large-scale attack, but we also now have to worry increasingly about homegrown violent extremists radicalizing in the shadows.

We do not want talk on terror; we want action on it. Terror and talks cannot go together.

Terrorists will always find a way to communicate. They will always find a solution.

After 9/11, it became clear that we [the United States] had to do several things to have a successful strategy to win the global war on terror, specifically that we had to go after the terrorists wherever we might find them, that we also had to go after state sponsors of terror, those who might provide sanctuary or safe harbor for terror.

International terrorists who pursue completely mad objectives such as establishing a world caliphate or something of the sort, are quite adept at disguising their real aims as a struggle for independence in Chechnya.

I have clearly said we faced terrorist enemies who use Islam to justify slaughtering innocent people and we have to stop them and we will. We have to defeat radical jihadist terrorism.

We have an interest in combating tactics in war that are abhorrent and that only fuel terrorism because they incite people on the ground.

Degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL

There is a direct correlation between what al Qaeda says and what it does. And the one thing that has been the gold standard of correlation has been bin Laden's 1995 - or was it 1996? - pledge that every attack is going to be more powerful than the last. If you go back to the first attack in Yemen in 1992 and chart it out, every attack has been more powerful, more destructive than the last one.

Terrorism is simply the weapon by which the weak engage the strong.