“We don’t say that we don’t have it, we’re still secular in Syria, but with the time, this secularism will be eroded.”

I don’t believe the United States will be ready to join Russia in fighting terrorists in Syria.

Syria is geographically and politically in the middle of the Middle East.

The Russians are fighting for us, for the world, and for their self.

We can have national dialogue where different Syrian parties sit and discuss the future of Syria. You can have interim government or transitional government. Then you have final elections, parliamentary elections, and you’re going to have presidential elections.

The hope for an American is different from the hope of a Syrian. For me, I should be the hope of the Syrian, not any other one, not American, neither French, nor anyone in the world. I’m President to help the Syrian people.

They need money from abroad, they need moral support and political support from abroad. They don’t have any grassroots, any incubator. So, when you stop the smuggling, we don’t have problems.

I think sadness prevails in Syria now. We don’t feel anything else but sadness because we have this killing every day, whether with chemical or any other kind.

Sometimes you may kill tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands with very primitive armaments.

We’re talking about one region, bigger regions, not only about Syria. This interlinked region, this intermingled, interlocked, whatever you want to call it ; if you strike somewhere, you have to expect the repercussions somewhere else in different forms in ways you don’t expect.

America is interested in re-arranging the region as it sees fit.

Of course, when Secretary-General is objective, he can play an important role in dealing with different officials in the United Nations in order to bring the policies of the different states – mainly Russia and the United States – toward more cooperation and more stability regarding Syria.

The army is making good advancement on daily basis against the terrorists. Of course, they still have the support of Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and some Western countries including the United States, but the only option that we have in that regard is to win.

We cannot use jihadists because it’s like shooting yourself in the foot.

I don’t believe in war, I believe in the principle of deterrence.

We asked for a delegation [of the Red Cross] in March 2013 when the first attack happened in Aleppo in the north of Syria,

Terrorism is a state of mind that on the one hand has to do with ignorance and, on the other hand, can be attributed to a feeling of desperation over the political situation, which at some point takes the form of revenge.

Secular artists see themselves with performance; they are more self involved, presentational.

My parents were secular. I am an atheist.

Religion says earn your life. Secular society says create your life. Jesus says, ‘My life for your life.

Intolerance has always been with us, you know. The moment you have ideology, we have intolerance, whether it’s the secular ideology or, you know ideocratic ideology, which always brings with it some kind of intolerance.

I had always thought of Egypt as a rather secular country. And I think it is, but people are quite observant of the strictures of Ramadan.

I’ve never really separated out the spiritual and the secular.

Which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.

We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.