Quotessence
Home / Topics / September 11 Quotes

September 11 Quotes

Browse 319 quotes about September 11.

Related topics

WorldSeptember 11 2001PeopleTerrorismTerroristEventsAmericaIfsNationsCountryPresidentWarHas BeensRemembrance For 9 11ThinkingWayChangedHappenedIraqStatesTerrorThreatUnitedYearsGovernmentTerrorist AttacksActionBelieveNew YorkRememberUnited StatesMadeMilitaryMurderSecurityTerribleCommunityNever ForgetTryingWeekAfghanistanFeltImportantInnocentKnowsLostNeedsPatriotPatriot ActPolicyProtectSept 11ShockVictim

September 11 Quotes

“My former attitude was the luxury of a sheltered child who got to his twenties without ever doubting the stability (and, smugly, I know, the superiority) of his country, without disaster. As it did to so many of my generation, 9/11 broke a stupor that should have broken well before. It seems impossible to me that people who weren't alive then will soon be getting their driver's licenses. When I zoom out, much of this country's history since that day seems a fitful, graceless descent to overseas violence and domestic paranoia. Terrorism works.”

AmericaChangeUnited StatesViolenceTerrorismPatriotismSeptember 11Paranoia9 11
Book:Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poems Now
Create image

“instead of mourning, instead of a moment of silence or a hateful, islamophobic message, how about today we make the world a little brighter? be kinder. be a little gentler, with yourself and others. take more pictures. tell more jokes. be a better human. today is a lot more than a tragedy. today is a birthday. a day of suicide awareness. a wedding. a birth. a new job. today is a kiss and someone on a tarred over warehouse roof whispering about the day the earth stood still and the day it began spinning again. be kind. just be kind. it's time we took this day back for the wild ones, for the fiery eyes, for the happy and the brave and the new. no more mourning. let it just be a sunday.”

LossGriefTerrorismMoving ForwardMourningNonfictionSeptember 119 11Take Your Power Back
Book:calloused: a field journal
Create image

“Our grief is not a cry for war. "That's how New Yorkers feel," the driver said. "They know what bombing looks like, and they know the hell it is. But outside New York, people will feel guilty because they weren't here. They'll be yelling for revenge out of guilt and ignorance. Sure, we all want to catch the criminals, but only people who weren't in New York will want to bomb another country and repeat what happened here.”

WarIgnoranceGuiltRevengeNew York CitySeptember 11BombingNew Yorker
Book:My Life on the Road
Create image

“The National Institute of Standards and Technology has provided a preliminary estimation that between 16,400 and 18,800 civilians were in the WTC complex as of 8:46 am on September 11. At most 2,152 individual died in the WTC complex who were not 1) fire or police first responders, 2) security or fire safety personnel of the WTC or individual companies, 3) volunteer civilians who ran to the WTC after the planes' impact to help others or, 4) on the two planes that crashed into the Twin Towers. Out of this total number of fatalities, we can account for the workplace location of 2,052 individuals, or 95.35 percent. Of this number, 1,942 or 94.64 percent either worked or were supposed to attend a meeting at or above the respective impact zones of the Twin Towers; only 110, or 5.36 percent of those who died, worked below the impact zone. While a given person's office location at the WTC does not definitively indicate where that individual died that morning or whether he or she could have evacuated, these data strongly suggest that the evacuation was a success for civilians below the impact zone.”

September 11Numbers GameInsensitive Statement
Author:9/11 Commission
Create image

“Then, one sunny September morning, the illusion of a personal God that I tried so hard to believe in, exploded over the skies of Manhattan. Even as the ashes and ruin of this horrific act of blind faith settled over New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, I watched people across the country scrambling to that same irrational altar for their answers. In the fierce storm of emotion that rolled across this country, one realization rose to the surface of my mind with blinding clarity: certainly this mechanism of unassailable blind faith is one of the greatest risks mankind faces today.”

AmericaNew YorkTerrorismHarmManhattanSeptember 11Blind FaithPennsylvaniaIrrationalityWashingtonReligious HarmWestboro Baptist ChurchLeaving ReligionFred PhelpsLeaving FaithLeaving Westboro Baptist ChurchSeptember 11 Terrorist Attacks
Author:Nathan Phelps
Create image

“It is a neglected but essential fact that we cannot appreciate the relationship between religion and violence unless we grasp the nature and meaning of the two partners in this relationship. Yet our understandings both of religion and of violence are inadequate. Further, we usually consider too few offspring of their troubled marriage: when we think of “religious violence,” we tend to think only of holy war and (especially since September 11) religious terrorism. However, those are not the only types of religious violence.”

ViolenceTerrorismIntoleranceSeptember 11CrusadesJihadReligious ViolenceHoly WarReligious Terrorism
Book:Cruel Creeds, Virtuous Violence: Religious Violence Across Culture and History
Create image

“The first of our losses happened on September 11, 2001. Years later, during my freshman year at college, a popular topic of conversation in the dining hall was where you were on 9/11. I learned that no matter how far away you were from New York that day, no matter how distant your connection to that day was, no matter how much lower than zero the count of the people you lost on that day was, if you were white, 9/11 happened to you personally, with blunt and scalding force. Because the antithesis of an American is an immigrant and because we could not be victims in the public eye, we became suspects. And so September 11 changed the immigration landscape forever.”

AmericaImmigrationImmigrantsSuspectsSeptember 11Americans9 11
Book:The Undocumented Americans
Create image

“It is very clear from the historical record that without British help neither Wahhabism nor the House of Saud would be in existence today. Wahhabism is a British-inspired fundamentalist movement in Islam. Through its defense of the House of Saud, the US also supports Wahhabism directly and indirectly regardless of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Wahhabism is violent, right wing, ultra-conservative, rigid, extremist, reactionary, sexist, and intolerant.”

HelpingWould BeTodayHouseExistenceSupportClearRecordsMovementWingsHistoricalIslamInspiredConservativeBritishDefenseTerroristViolentSeptemberRight WingSeptember 11ExtremistFundamentalistReactionariesSexistTerrorist AttacksUltrasSeptember 11 2001
Author:Andre Vltchek
Create image

“September 11 definitely opened our eyes, but when I was 19 or whatever on the last record, we just didn't care about anything. We were too young to care about anything. And then as you get older, you don't really have any excuse to be stupid anymore, to be in the dark. That just kind of opened everyone's eyes (which I probably wish it did to more people) that there's obviously something wrong, to try and figure out what it is and what's going on in the world.”

PeopleWorldTryingKindEyeCareLastsYoungWishDarkRecordsStupidFiguresExcuseSeptemberSeptember 11
Author:Deryck Whibley
Create image

“The terrible state of public education has paid huge dividends in ignorance. Huge. We now have a country that can be told blatant lies - easily checkable, blatant lies - and I'm not talking about the covert workings of the CIA. When we have a terrorist attack, on September 11, 2001 with 19 men - 15 of them are Saudis - and five minutes later the whole country thinks they're from Iraq - how can you have faith in the public? This is an easily checkable fact. The whole country is like the O.J. Simpson jurors.”

ThinkingMenCountryStatesWholeFactsLyingTalkingFiveMinutesIgnoranceHugeTerriblePaidIraqTerroristHave FaithSeptemberFive MinutesCiaSeptember 11Not TalkingSaudisDividendsPublic EducationTerrorist AttacksCovertSeptember 11 2001JurorsBlatant Lies
Author:Fran Lebowitz
Create image

“September 11 was a day of de-Enlightenment. Politics stood revealed as a veritable Walpurgis Night of the irrational. And such old, old stuff. The conflicts we now face or fear involve opposed geographical arenas, but also opposed centuries or even millennia. It is a landscape of ferocious anachronisms: nuclear jihad in the Indian subcontinent; the medieval agonism of Islam; the Bronze Age blunderings of the Middle East.”

AgeFacesNightStuffMiddleCenturyConflictEnlightenmentIslamEastNuclearLandscapeIndianMiddle EastSeptemberIrrationalArenaMedievalSeptember 11JihadBronzeOld StuffAnachronism
Author:Martin Amis
Create image

“One could dismiss the zombie trend as merely feeding a mass public that craves the strange and bizarre. Such an explanation would be only skin-deep. Popular culture often provides a window into the subliminal or unstated fears of citizens, and zombies are no exception. Some cultural commentators argue that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are a primary cause for renewed interest in the living dead, and the numbers appear to back up this assertion.”

Would BeCultureCausesInterestNumbersStrangeCitizensMassWindowSkinsArguingTerroristPrimariesExplanationExceptionTrendsSeptemberFeedingBizarreZombieCraveAssertionSeptember 11CommentatorsPopular CultureTerrorist AttacksSubliminalSeptember 11 2001Skin Deep
Author:Daniel Drezner
Create image

“It is wrong for a secular government to promote prayer. We think the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional. What if the president declared a National Day of Cursing God because He failed us on September 11? Americans would say, "You've overstepped your authority." That's how we feel when he promotes prayer.”

IfsThinkingFeelsGovernmentPresidentPrayerAtheismAuthorityPositive AtheismWhat IfSecularSeptemberSeptember 11CursingUnconstitutionalNational Day Of Prayer
Author:Dan Barker
Create image

“Before September 11, we were fighting terrorism in our southwestern Philippines, and it was a lonely fight. However, we were able to contain it now in one island in that part of the Philippines. But after September 11, and after the creation of the global coalition against terrorism, now we have allies, and I believe now it will easier with allies.”

BelieveAbleFightingI BelieveCreationEasierLonelyTerrorismIslandsAlliesSeptemberSeptember 11CoalitionsPhilippinesFighting Terrorism
Author:Gloria Macapagal Arroyo
Create image

“There are terrible, terrible memories of September 11th, things that I saw, people that I lost, the devastation, the identification of bodies. I mean, all these memories come back to you at different times. And then the other side of it this tremendous response with the firefighters and the police officers saving people, the rescue workers.”

PeopleMeanDifferentBodyLostSidesMemoriesSawsTerriblePoliceResponseWorkersSavingOfficersRescueSeptemberSeptember 11Police OfficerIdentificationDifferent TimesFirefighterDevastationSeptember 11th
Author:Rudy Giuliani
Create image

“The attacks of September 11, 2001, were spectacular, riveting, grim, costly and searing. The shock that they caused reverberated throughout the world. What happened in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania ended the lives of thousands of people and changed the lives of many more. But they did not change the world.”

PeopleWorldHappenedNew YorkChangedChanging The WorldShockSeptemberSpectacularSeptember 11GrimPennsylvaniaSeptember 11 2001
Author:Michael Mandelbaum
Create image

“Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: mindless cowardice. Mindless may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from. It came from religion.”

PeopleMindMayUnderstandingPayLeaderAtheismNew YorkBoxesPositive AtheismContraryInsaneHelpfulCowardCowardiceSeptemberTelephonesClicheSeptember 11SuitableAtrocitiesMindless
Author:Richard Dawkins
Create image