Michael Collins Quotes

Spies and informers, beware. Tried, convicted and executed by the Irish Republican Army

Terrorism is to be used toward an end. It is not an end in itself.

I don’t think one can speak of defeating the IRA, of eliminating them completely, but it is the design of the security forces to reduce their level of violence to something like an acceptable level.

Asymmetrical warfare is a euphemism for terrorism, just like collateral damage is a euphemism for killing innocent civilians.

That the policy of the dynamiter is senseless as well as criminal is evident when we consider that all the recent attempts have been directed not even against the governing classes, or their official buildings, but against places of common public resort, and were more likely to hurt friends or neutrals than foes.

In the '70s, terrorism was much more serious, in that many more people got killed.

Any organization or any individual that targets civilians and kills them for political agenda is a terrorist organization.

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.

If it acts like a terrorist, if it walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist, it's a terrorist, right?

When things did go wrong for the IRA, when civilians were killed, I tried to put it in context, not defend it.

Bottoms line: terrorists are always at work.

A terrorist is one who kills innocents for the pursuit of a political aim.

The British don't runaway from terrorism. We have had 30-odd years of terrorism in our own country from the Irish Republican Army. We're used to it.

Terrorism, to me, is the use of terror for political purpose, and terror is indiscriminate murder of civilians to make a political point.

Terrorism is you winning hearts and minds of people.

I think the forms of terrorism are becoming very diverse, amongst them cyber-terrorism, for example.

We don't have a war on terror - that's a technique. We didn't have a war on blitzkriegs, and we didn't have a war on surprise attacks.

I never call it an insurgency. I call it terrorism.

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.

Terrorism is not an enemy. It is a tactic used by an enemy in pursuit of a political objective. There will be no final victory against terrorism, but there may be victories that are close enough to final against particular political groups that use terror tactics.

An insurgency is the most difficult to fight of all military activities.

The borderline between guerrilla warfare and crime, between patriotism and terrorism, is often a very thin one.

Terrorism always has the advantage of surprise.

Terrorism is what the weak use to increase their bargaining power against the strong.

The War on Terror is the only war we have ever been involved with in which our enemy did not want the war to end…. Terrorists do not want to defeat us in the usual sense; they want us to become more like them.