- "The resolve of our great nation is being tested. But make no mistake, we will show the world that we will pass the test."
{speech on September 11, 2001}
- "I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."
{speech to New York rescue workers, September 14, 2001}
- "Great tragedy has come to us, and we are meeting it with the best that is in our country, with courage and concern for others because this is America. This is who we are."
{radio address, September 15, 2001}
- "On September 11 2001, America felt its vulnerability even to threats that gather on the other side of the Earth. We resolved then, and we are resolved today, to confront every threat from any source that could bring sudden terror and suffering to America."
- "Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness and a quiet, unyielding anger."
- "What's the sense of sending $2 million missiles to hit a $10 tent that's empty?"
{Private Oval Office meeting, September 13, 2001}
- "War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing."
{Speech at National Cathedral, September 14, 2001}
- "How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for America? I'll tell you how I respond: I'm amazed. I'm amazed that there is such misunderstanding of what our country is about, that people would hate us. I am, I am -- like most Americans, I just can't believe it. Because I know how good we are, and we've go to do a better job of making our case. We've got to do a better job of explaining to the people in the Middle East, for example, that we don't fight a war against Islam or Muslims. We don't hold any religion accountable. We're fighting evil. And these murderers have hijacked a great religion in order to justify their evil deeds. And we cannot let it stand."
{Press conference}
Rudolph Giuliani, Governor of New York - at time of attacks - "The city is going to survive, we are going to get through it, It's going to be very, very difficult time. I don't think we yet know the pain that we're going to feel when we find out who we lost, but the thing we have to focus on now is getting this city through this, and surviving and being stronger for it."
- "I want the people of New York to be an example to the rest of the country, and the rest of the world, that terrorism can't stop us."
- "Maybe the purpose of all this is to find out if America today is as strong as when we fought for our independence or when we fought for ourselves as a Union to end slavery or as strong as our fathers and grandfathers who fought to rid the world of Nazism and communism. The terrorists were counting on our cowardice. They've learned a lot about us since then. And so have we. "
{at a funeral for a friend}
British Prime Minister Tony Blair - "The full horror of what has happened in the United States earlier today is now becoming clearer. It is hard even to contemplate the utter carnage and terror which has engulfed so many innocent people. We've offered President Bush and the American people our solidarity, our profound sympathy, and our prayers. But it is plain that citizens of many countries round the world, including Britain, will have been caught up in this terror."
{Interview, September 11, 2001}
- "We know if they could, they would go further."
{speech to the House of Commons, September 14, 2001}
- "It will be determined, it will take time, and it will continue over time until this menace is properly dealt with and its machinery of terror destroyed."
{on the appropriate action to be taken after the attacks, speech to the House of Commons, September 14, 2001}
- "Understand the causes of terror? Yes, we should try, but let there be no moral ambiguity about this: nothing could ever justify the events of September 11 and it is to turn justice on its head to pretend it could."
- "As for those that carried out these attacks there are no adequate words of condemnation. Their barbarism will stand as their shame for all eternity."
- "We will put a trap around the regime and I say to the Taleban: Surrender the terrorists or surrender power. It's your choice."
- "Any action taken will be against the terrorist network of Bin Laden.... As for the Taleban, they can surrender the terrorists or face the consequences - and again in any action the aim will be to eliminate their military hardware, cut off their finances, disrupt their supplies, target their troops, not civilians."
Secretary of State Colin Powell - "We want him brought to justice. If justice happens to be a 500-pound bomb that lands on him because he wouldn't surrender, well then, justice has been served."
- "It's easier said than done. We did not get the intelligence information needed to predict that this was about to happen, to be aware of this kind of event coming our way."
American 42nd US President Bill Clinton - "Our paradigm now seems to be: Something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us. And if they don't, they can go straight to hell."
- "Could there be more? Of course there could be. Can we do a better job of defense? Yes, we can. Have we learned a lot from September 11? We have. So I'm basically very, very confident about the long-run future of this. I just think we've got a lot of diligent, difficult work to do."
OTHERS - "It's God's responsibility to forgive Bin Laden ... It's our responsibility to arrange the meeting!"--
United States Marines
- "The people who did this have underestimated them. They have looked upon the most affluent and overweight people in the world, seen softness and not understood that underneath, there is iron and resolve and unfathomable will. They have seen the startling diversity of race and religion and ethnicity and heard the cacophony of voices in that remarkable country, and failed to grasp that beneath the heart of every hyphenated American, there rages the heart of an American, period."--
Christie Blatchford {National Post - Canadian national newspaper, September 12, 2001}
- "A group of us are going to do something."--
Thomas E. Burnett Jr. {in a cell phone call to his wife in his last minutes as a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93 in which he planned with others to stop the hijackers aboard the flight. Minutes after the call, this flight crashed in rural Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001}
- "Me, me, me -- and thousands dead. But that is what happened today. Now it is about us, and not just about them."--
Roger Ebert {whose wife and stepdaughter were in New York at the time at the attacks -- September 12, 2001}
- "I got to kiss her and say 'I love you' and 'Have a nice trip.'"--
Cheryl O'Brien {talking about her last words with her mother while dropping her off at the airport. Cheryl's mom, Thelma Cuccinello, was on American Airlines flight 11.}
- "What do I tell the pilot to do?"--
Barbara Olsen {in a cell phone call to her husband in her last minutes as a passenger on American Airlines flight 77 which slammed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001}
- "No matter how hard we try words simply cannot express the horror, the shock, and the revulsion we all feel over what took place in this nation on Tuesday morning. September 11 will go down in our history as a day to remember."--
Billy Graham
- "The events of September 11 were carried out by people armed not with weapons of mass destruction, but with blades you can buy at a newsagent."--
Phillip Adams
- "Imagine, a September 11 with weapons of mass destruction. It's not 3,000. It's tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children."--
Donald Rumsfeld (American Secretary of Defense)
- "As the representatives of the people we are here to declare that our resolve has not been weakened by these horrific and cowardly acts."--
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle
President George W. Bush
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