Richard Engel Quotes

Fences and walls can be effective and even soothing, at least for those who build them.

Shaped like Texas, but twice as big, Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world. It exports almost nothing - mostly just cotton, gold and livestock - and doesnt have enough money to import much of anything, either.

Were all bloggers and punks and rebels with cameras. There is absolutely no respect for career journalists anymore.

I dont look for good-news stories or bad-news stories.

The Syrian border town of Qa'im was the main gateway Islamic radicals used to go to Iraq. Syria became the passageway for extremists from Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations to fight a jihad against American forces in Iraq.

Everest has a special place in all of our imaginations. For centuries, Everest was a little bit like the moon. It was the place where everyone wanted to go. Empires wanted to be able to say that they were the first to put a climber on top of Everest. So when a tragedy happens up on that mountain, I think it has a global resonance. Everybody's heard of Everest. Everybody knows what Everest is and what it means, and the significance.

I think war should be illegal.

A lot of Iran's empowerment is a result of the war in Iraq.

Putting a bomb in a dumpster or putting it with a timer by a race, it is not the kind of - similar to the attacks that we've seen where people open fire with assault rifles and things like that.

Hezbollah and the government are only two of 18 political factions in Lebanon, most of them armed. There are militant Christian groups, Palestinian radicals, al-Qaida, Druze militias and even armed bands of Marxists still operating in Lebanon.

Every child is taught if you try to please everyone, you end up upsetting everyone.

Osama bin laden organized an attack that was carried out against the United States, New York, Pentagon, and the other aircraft, with 19 attackers, 19 guys with box cutters. An attack that's probably cost almost nothing.

How can you claim infallibility and claim that in these 114 [drone] strikes there was just one mistake -- one person killed that was a civilian -- and at the same time say, 'Well, we don't really know how many people were killed or who they were, but we know they weren't civilians'? I don't know how you can do that.

Based on the people l've spoken to, I think the impression is: Is America safer from Al Qaeda? Yes. Is America weaker as a nation because we have overspent and over-focused on Al Qaeda? Yes. I think that would be the conclusion that people seem to have come to and that I tend to agree with.