“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.”

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].

You said treaties, and a Russian official said ; we have not agreement… contracts, that we have to fulfill, and those contracts are like any country ; you buy armaments, you buy anything you want.

Opposition doesn’t mean to take arms and kill people and destroy everything.

We’re not like the American administration, we’re not social media administration or government. We are a government that deals with reality. When we have evidence, we’ll announce it.

Every country has criminals who have to be fought. They can exist anywhere, including the government or the army – or outside the government and army.

I cannot afford to make mistakes.

When you talk about Al-Qaeda it doesn’t matter if he’s Syrian or American or from Europe or from Asia or Africa.

Since its very inception, Israel has been a threat.

Revolution should be Syrian, cannot be revolution imported from abroad.

At home and abroad I have repeatedly been asked what are the main essentials of a successful prime minister.

I lived abroad most of my life in insular international communities.

Negroes are in no mood to shoulder guns for democracy abroad while they are denied democracy here at home.

The waiting that people do in Turkey to get aboard one of these boats is incredible.

And it occurs to me that if I were aboard a rowboat floating in the middle of all the beer I’ve drunk in a lifetime,

We’ve just kept the ship running y’know what I mean? You change engineers from time to time and as long as everybody coming aboard knows what direction the ship is, everything’s alright.

At the moment about 350,000 students return to China from abroad each year – 350,000 young and educated people. I know about them because they know me and often ask me in the street if they can take a selfie with me.