“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.”

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.

[Hezbollah forces] cannot exist all over Syria anyway, for many reasons, but they exist on the borders.

Al-Qaeda has one ideology and they go back to the same leadership in Afghanistan or in Syria or in Iraq. That’s the question. You have tens of thousands of foreigners, that’s definitely correct. We are fighting them on the ground and we know this.

The captain doesn’t think about death, or life, he thinks about saving his ship.

Something that many officials in the West don’t see or don’t realize or don’t acknowledge – and in the interest of the Russian people, because they have been facing terrorists for decades now.

They want to criticize you, let them criticize and do not worry. Just be transparent with your people and tell them this is the reality.

When you have terrorism, you have a war. When you have a war, you always have innocent lives that could be the victim of any war, so, we don’t have to discuss what the image in the west before discussing the image in Syria. That’s the question.

” What do you mean? What you mean is that they want to look back in history. And so I think it’s only natural for entertainment to reflect that.

It is necessary to gain the common people to our order. The best means to that end is influence in the schools.

Well, that was kind of fun, wasn’t it? I mean, I don’t see where this could go, because we pretty much did everything. But it was fun.”

We must win the common people in every corner.

But I have contrived an explanation which has every advantage; is inviting to christians of every communion; gradually frees them from all religious prejudices

This is the great object held out by this association; and the means of attaining it is illumination, enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason which will dispell the clouds of superstition and of prejudice.

The president [Barack Obama] is not willing to send in apaches and spotters if the Iraqis say they don’t want them and if it means that these Shia mobilization forces are going to be going after and trying to kill Americans.

And of all illumination which human reason can give, none is comparable to the discovery of what we are, our nature, our obligations, what happiness we are capable of, and what are the means of attaining it.