“When you talk about cooperation, it means cooperation between two legal governments, not cooperation between foreign government and any faction within Syria.”

If it’s not a national army, it cannot have the support, and if it doesn’t have the public support of every sect, it cannot do its job and advance recently. It cannot. The army of the family doesn’t make national war.

When you have terrorists, you don’t throw at them balloons or you don’t use rubber sticks, for example. You have to use armaments.

I am Syrian, I was made in Syria, I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.

I don’t believe that in a couple of months Erdogan and the United States regime, and the Western regimes in general, and of course Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are going to stop the support of the terrorists.

We’ve been living in difficult circumstances and we prepare ourselves for every possibility. But that doesn’t mean if you’re prepared things will be better ; it’s going to get worse with any foolish strike or stupid war.

I will tell [Barack Obama] very simply : present what you have as evidence to the public, be transparent.

As I said, this [repercussions] may take different forms : direct and indirect. Direct when people want to retaliate, or governments. Indirect when you’re going to have instability and the spread of terrorism all over the region that will influence the west directly.

The logical thing is to implement the Arab Defense Agreement.

We’ve been dealing with this kind of terrorism since the fifties, since the Muslim Brotherhood came to Syria at that time.

Many people do not understand the difference between peace and a peace treaty. If you want to have real peace with normal relations between people, you need to have comprehensive peace.

We believe that Lebanon has been the first real experience for all the Arabs.

What the army is doing is cleaning those areas, and the indication that the army is strong is that it’s making advancement in that area. It never went to one area and couldn’t enter to it – that’s an indication.

Terrorists have been supported by tens of foreign countries, so Syria alone wouldn’t be able to face this kind of war without the help of its friends.

When you’re in the middle of a storm, leaving your country just because you have to leave without any reasonable reason, it means you’re quitting your country and this is treason.

Despite the ethnic diversity within each nation, the social fabric of the region by and large is one.

In Aleppo we had the missile itself, and the material, and the sample from the sand, from the soil, and samples from the blood [of chemical weapons].

Compassion, however, should mean providing a mechanism to escape poverty rather than simply maintaining people in an impoverished state by supplying handouts.

I want to be the poster child for taking care of yourself after 40. Obesity is an epidemic in this country and I’m a living, breathing example of what it means to stay healthy.

National security is a really big problem for journalists, because no journalist worth his salt wants to endanger the national security, but the law talks about anyone who endangers the security of the United States is going to go to jail.

Just because somebody happens to disagree with you about something doesn’t mean that they become your mortal enemy and that you should try to destroy them and destroy their life and destroy their family.

Danger is the very basis of superstition. It produces a searching after help supernaturally when human means are no longer supposed to be available.

But the apparent inconsistency vanishes when you read his book and find that by property he means simply legally privileged wealth or the power of usury, and not at all the possession by the labourer of his products.

You can’t allow the forces of political correction to shut you up. I mean, why are people afraid to say, ‘Merry Christmas?’ Give me a break. If people don’t like it, yeah, they can go do something else.

Successful people inspire me, and I don’t mean just in their career but people who have amazing families, or who have made a difference, or followed their dreams.