Talking to the Enemy Quotes

“A woman was standing at a bus stop, wildly flailing her umbrella. A curious onlooker approached and asked, “Why do you keep waving your umbrella about?” The woman replied with some annoyance that such an idiotic question should be asked of her: “Why, to keep the pink elephants away, of course.” “But, my dear lady,” the onlooker protested, “there are no pink elephants around.” The woman, exasperated, retorted, “Precisely, because I keep them away.” The Pink Elephant Fallacy is an example of the simplest of all failures of critical thought, circular reasoning.”
― Scott Atran, Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists

“Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true. —FRANCIS BACON”
― Scott Atran, Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists

“I dedicate this work to Vasily Arkhipov, the deputy commander of a Soviet nuclear submarine off the Cuban shore who said no to his comrades and may have saved the world. That was on October 27, 1962, around the time my father came home from his defense job and told me at the doorstep to our house that there was “only a twenty-percent chance, son” the next day would never come. No terrorist action today remotely poses that kind of existential threat for our world, and I hope you’ll keep that in mind in reading on.”
― Scott Atran, Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists