Bosnia Quotes

Religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews versus Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians versus Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians versus Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants versus Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims versus Hindus), Sudan (Muslims versus Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims versus Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims versus Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists versus Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims versus Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite versus Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians versus Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis versus Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. In these places religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in the last 10 years.

There can be no peace or coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic societies and political institutions. The failure of these institutions to function and the instability of these regimes in Muslim countries, manifest in frequent changes and coups d'état, is most often the consequence of their a priori opposition to Islam, as the fundamental and foremost feeling of the people in those countries.

Some people accused me of being pro-Muslim in Bosnia, but I realised that our job is to give all sides an equal hearing, but in cases of genocide you can't just be neutral. You can't just say, 'Well, this little boy was shot in the head and killed in besieged Sarajevo and that guy over there did it, but maybe he was upset because he had an argument with his wife.' No, there is no equality there, and we had to tell the truth.

The costs of failure are infinitely greater than the price of victory.

Italy, which is inhabited only by a single race speaking the same language and professing the same religion, experiences so many difficulties in its unification. For the moment all it has achieved is anarchy and disorder. Judge what would happen in Turkey if free scope were given to all the different national aspirations …. It would need a century and torrents of blood to establish even a fairly stable state of affairs.

Bosnia should be a secular state. A non-secular Bosnia would be terror.

My mum said: 'Germany is our second home' and it's true. Germany gave us their open hands. I don't know which country could have done that, at that time, to welcome refugees from Bosnia.

Somewhere, sometime, somehow, some way these people will have to answer for their acts.

Truth and reconciliation' are always combined, but I would split them: I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth.

From far away, through the sights of a sniper, they would look like Muslims, Serbs or Croats to somebody, but I approached them face to face, I saw them clearly, and trust me... They were just people..

Who lies for you will lie against you.

America stands alone as the world’s indispensable nation.

These are not concentration camps, but transient centers …. You are witnessing a great moment in the history of the Serbian nation.

A lot of people have warned President Clinton that Bosnia will turn into another Vietnam, which would be embarrassing for him because he'll have to go back to college.

This may not be a just peace, but it is more just than the continuation of war.

We don’t have a dog in that fight.

I had my life threatened by Bosnian Serbs on numerous occasions.

I would sacrifice peace in order to win sovereignty for Bosnia, but for that peace in Bosnia, I would not sacrifice sovereignty.

Bosnia is a complicated country: three religions, three nations and those 'others'. Nationalism is strong in all three nations; in two of them there are a lot of racism, chauvinism, separatism; and now we are supposed to make a state out of that.

Muslims are like wild dogs. You can't deal with them, you can only kill them.

I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth.

If we must fight, then by God we will fight. And I hope they [the Croats and Bosnians] will not be so crazy as to fight against us. Because if we don’t know how to work well or to do business, at least we know how to fight well.

They'll never do this to you again.

My opponents ask why we haven’t yet solved the Bosnian problem. Well, it started in 1369.

To have a body of humanitarian law, built up over decades and accepted by the great majority of U. N. member states, without an enforcement mechanism is a fruitless exercise.