Quotes by Richard Perle

About Richard Perle:

Richard Norman Perle is an American political advisor, consultant, and lobbyist who began his career in government as a senior staff member to Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson on the Senate Armed Services Committee in the 1970s. Later he was heavily involved with the Reagan administration and served as the assistant Secretary of Defense and also worked on the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee from 1987 to 2004. He was Chairman of the Board in 2001 under the Bush Administration but eventually resigned in 2003 due to conflict of interests.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Acknowledge that a more closely integrated Europe is no longer an unqualified American interest.

Richard Perle

But if the UN cannot or will not revise its rules in ways that establish beyond question the legality of the measures the United States must take to protect the American people, then we should unashamedly and explicitly reject the jurisdiction of the...

Richard Perle

Dictators must have enemies. They must have internal enemies to justify their secret police and external enemies to justify their military forces.

Richard Perle

Dictatorships start wars because they need external enemies to exert internal control over their own people.

Richard Perle

In any event, the problem in Iran is much bigger than weapons. The problem is the terrorist regime that seeks the weapons. The regime must go.

Richard Perle

Law-abiding citizens value privacy. Terrorists require invisibility. The two are not the same, and they should not be confused.

Richard Perle

No operational commander should have to assign a soldier a task that could be done as well by a computer, a remote sensor, or an unmanned airplane.

Richard Perle

Non-citizen terrorist suspects are not members of the American national community, and they have no proper claim on the rights Americans accord one another.

Richard Perle

Nor should we exclude the possibility that Islamic terrorism may begin to make common cause with Western political extremists of the far Left and far Right.

Richard Perle

Sometimes the things we have to do are objectionable in the eyes of others.

Richard Perle

The same European governments that hesitated to confront terrorists were more than prepared to oppose us.

Richard Perle

We may be so eager to protect the right to dissent that we lose sight of the difference between dissent and subversion.

Richard Perle

We should force European governments to choose between Paris and Washington.

Richard Perle

Right now, American law bars the admission of aliens suspected of terrorist activity - but not of terrorist sympathies.

Richard Perle

There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they've been liberated.

Richard Perle

We must do our utmost to preserve our British ally's strategic independence from Europe.

Richard Perle

To stop terrorists before the strike, we must do three things: deny them entry into the country, curtail their freedom of action inside the country, and deprive them of material and moral support from within the country.

Richard Perle

Few governments in the world, for example, praise human rights more ardently than does the government of France, and few have a worse record of supporting tyrants and killers.

Richard Perle

National sovereignty is an obligation as well as an entitlement. A government that will not perform the role of a government forfeits the rights of a government.

Richard Perle

If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now.

Richard Perle

Author Bio

  • NameRichard Perle
  • DescriptionAmerican government official
  • BornSeptember 16, 1941
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPolitician