“You cannot reform your society or institution without opening your mind. So the core issue is how to open the mind, the whole society, and this means everybody in society including everyone.”

The fact that there are people who criticize me doesn’t mean that people hate me.

We don’t discuss this issue [ chemical weapons ] in public because we never said that we have it, and we never said that we don’t have it. It’s a Syrian issue ; it’s a military issue we never discuss in public with anyone.

There’s a video about one of those women who they consider as rebel or fighter who worked with those terrorists and she said “they didn’t tell us how to use the chemical weapons” and one of those weapons exploded in one of the tunnels and killed twelve. That’s what she said.

How could that army do that if it’s a family army or a sect army ? What about the rest of the country who support the government ? It’s not realistic, it doesn’t happen. Otherwise, the whole country will collapse.

They delayed it till just a few days before al-Ghouta when they sent those team, and the team itself said in its report that he did everything as he wanted. There was not a single obstacle.

Did the President order anyone to kill civilians, did he order the destruction, did he order supporting terrorism in his country? Of course not.

If the rebels or the terrorists in this region or any other group have [chemical warfare], this could happen, I don’t know. I’m not a fortuneteller to tell you what’s going to happen.

Regarding fighting terrorism, we are ready to cooperate with anyone in this world with no conditions. That’s crux of our policy, not today, not yesterday; for years, even before the war on Syria, we always said that.

I’ve never heard of soft war.There’s no soft war. War is war. Any war is ruthless. When you fight terrorists, you fight them like any other war.

The United States’ credibility is at an all-time low. So, this war is against the interest of the Untied States.

Almost all countries have natural dividing lines, and when ethnic and religious partition occurs in one country, it’ll soon happen elsewhere.

It should be known that Israel is based on treachery.

You have different parties, different factions, you have different ideologies ; you have everything in Middle East region now.

My country and me, we are part of this region, we’re not separated. We cannot discuss it as Syria or as me ; it should be as part, as a whole, as comprehensive. That’s how we have to look at it.

In the eighties, we asked for international coalition against terrorism after the Muslim Brotherhood crisis in Syria when they started killing, of course they were defeated at that time. We asked for the same thing. So, this is a long-term policy that we base our policy on for years now.

We are facing an external attack against us, which is more dangerous than any other previous wars… We are dealing with those who are extremists, who only know the language of killing and criminality.

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

Just because you are different does not mean that you have to be rejected.

I mean, just because you’re a musician doesn’t mean all your ideas are about music.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

To many forms of life of our northern lands, winter means a long sleep; to others, it means what it means to many fortunate human beings – travels in warm climes.

I think there’s too many rules in golf. And I mean that’s easy to say for a player, but putting together a rule book is a tough thing in this game because there are so many different parts of the game.

The Nature Lover is not looking for mere facts but for meanings, for something he can translate into terms of his own life.

I mean, to say it in a sentence, he describes elections as occasions in which groups of investors coalesce and invest to control the state.