Golda meir quotes

Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart, don't know how to laugh either.

Show me a sensible person who likes himself or herself! I know myself too well to like what I see. I know but too well that I'm not what I'd like to be.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

It isn't really important to decide when you are very young just exactly what you want to become when you grow up. It is much more important to decide on the way you want to live. If you are going to be honest with yourself and honest with your friends, if you are going to get involved in causes which are good for others, not only for yourselves, then it seems to me that that is sufficient, and maybe what you will be is only a matter of chance.

If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we'd rather be alive and have the bad image.

Israel itself is the strongest guarantee against another Holocaust.

There is only one thing I hope to see before I die, and that is that my people should not need expressions of sympathy anymore.

There's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or even worse.

It is a dreadful thing to see the dead city. Next to the port I found children, women, the old, waiting for a way to leave. I entered the houses, there were houses where the coffee and pita bread were left on the table, and I could not avoid [thinking] that this, indeed, had been the picture in many Jewish towns [i.e., in Europe, during World War II].

The world hates a Jew who hits back. The world loves us only when we are to be pitied.

The Egyptians could run to Egypt, the Syrians into Syria. The only place we could run was into the sea, and before we did that we might as well fight.

There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist.

Being seventy is not a sin. It's not a joy, either.

Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.

Above all, this country is our own. Nobody has to get up in the morning and worry what his neighbors think of him. Being a Jew is no problem here.

We only want that which is given naturally to all peoples of the world, to be masters of our own fate, not of others, and in cooperation and friendship with others.

How can I explain the difference to me between America and Russia?.. the America I've known is a place where men on horseback escort union marchers, the Russia I've known is a place where men on horseback slaughter young Socialists and Jews.

Men who have reached and passed forty-five, have a look as if waiting for the secret of the other world, and as if they were perfectly sure of having found out the secret of this.

We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go.

It is not only a matter, I believe, of religious observance and practice. To me, being Jewish means and has always meant being proud to be part of a people that has maintained its distinct identity for more than 2,000 years, with all the pain and torment that has been inflicted upon it.

To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don't be.

I'm a slave to this leaf in a diary that lists what I must do, what I must say, every half hour.

Don't become cynical. Don't give up hope. Don't believe that everything is judged only by expediency. There is idealism in this world. There is human brotherhood.

The only way to eliminate war is to love our children more than we hate our enemies.

We can forgive you for killing our children, but we can never forgive you for making us kill your children.

You can get used to anything if you have to, even feeling perpetually guilty.

How does it feel to be a woman minister? I don't know; I've never been a man minister.

the modern woman asks herself: Is there something wrong with me if my children don't fill up my life?

To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man.

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life.

I never did anything alone. Whatever was accomplished in this country was accomplished collectively.

America is a great country. It has many shortcomings, many social inequalities, and it's tragic that the problem of the blacks wasn't solved fifty or even a hundred years ago, but it's still a great country, a country full of opportunities, of freedom! Does it seem nothing to you to be able to say what you like, even against the government, the Establishment?

Whether women are better than men I cannot say - but I can say they are certainly no worse.

Don't be humble... you're not that great.

If only political leaders would allow themselves to feel, as well as to think, the world might be a happier place.

I want to say to you, friends, that the Jewish community in Palestine is going to fight to the very end. If we have arms to fight with, we will fight with those, and if not, we will fight with stones in our hands.

The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.

Once in a Cabinet we had to deal with the fact that there had been an outbreak of assaults on women at night. One minister suggested a curfew; women should stay home after dark. I said, 'But it's the men who are attacking the women. If there's to be a curfew, let the men stay home, not the women.

I have given instructions that I be informed everytime one of our soldiers is killed, even if it is in themiddle of the night. When President Nasser leavesinstructions that he is to be awakened in the middleof the night if an Egyptian soldier is killed, there willbe peace.

Men are committing the rapes. Let them be put under curfew.

Any one who speaks in favor of bringing the Arab refugees back must also say how he expects to take the responsibility for it, if he is interested in the state of Israel. It is better that things are stated clearly and plainly: We shall not let this happen.

Glorious bouquets and storms of applause are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Not being beautiful was the true blessing. Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome.

We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown and when strawberries bloom in Israel.

My dear, old age is like an airplane flying in a storm. Once you're in it there's nothing you can do. You can't stop a plane, you can't stop a storm, you can't stop time. So you might as well take it easy, with wisdom.

At work, you think of the children you have left at home. At home, you think of the work you've left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself. Your heart is rent.

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.

It is not a sin to be seventy but it is also no joke.

From Russia I didn't bring out a single happy memory, only sad, tragic ones. The nightmare of pogroms, the brutality of Cossacks charging young Socialists, fear, shrieks of terror.

As President Nixon says, presidents can do almost anything, and President Nixon has done many things that nobody would have thought of doing.

The dog that trots about finds a bone.

I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.

One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.

You can't improve on saying nothing.

It's no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do?.. Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either.

A leader who doesn't hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.

Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.

Can we today measure devotion to husband and children by our indifference to everything else?

The deserts of the Middle East are in need of water, not bombers.

I don't want to have a bad influence on anybody, but there's no point in my giving up cigarettes now. I won't die young.

We will not forgive you for making us kill your sons.

There is no such thing as a Palestinian.

There will be peace in the Middle East only when the Arabs love their children more than they hate Israel.

A story once went the rounds of Israel to the effect that Ben-Gurion described me as 'the only man' in his cabinet. What amused me about is that he (or whoever invented the story) thought that this was the greatest compliment that could be paid to a woman. I very much doubt that any man would have been flattered if I had said about him that he was the only woman in the government!

How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.

We don't thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient.

I'm sure that someday children in schools will study the history of the men who made war as you study an absurdity. They'll be shocked, just as today we're shocked with cannibalism.

This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.

It isnt enough to believe in something; you have to have the stamina to meet obstacles and overcome them, to struggle.

We don't want wars even when we win.

Zionism and pessimism are not compatible.

I don't know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there's a good English phrase for it - cold war.

Women's liberation is just a lot of foolishness. It's men who are discriminated against. They can't bear children. And no one is likely to do anything about that.

The only alternative to war is peace and the only road to peace is negotiations.

You'll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

Fashion is an imposition, a reign on freedom.

I have always felt sorry for people afraid of feeling, of sentimentality, who are unable to weep with their whole heart. Because those who do not know how to weep do not know how to laugh either.

Those that perished in Hitler's gas chambers were the last Jews to die without standing up to defend themselves.

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do.

We say peace and the echo comes back from the other side, war. We dont want wars even when we win.

The Soviet government is the most realistic regime in the world - no ideals.

It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don't want victories anymore.

I can honestly say that I was never affected by the question of the success of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do, I was for it regardless of the possible outcome.

Anybody who believes in something without reservation believes that this thing is right and should be, has the stamina to meet obstacles and overcome them.

Arab sovereignty in Jerusalem just cannot be. This city will not be divided - not half and half, not 60-40, not 75-25, nothing.

One of the first sights that shocked me, when I came to Israel in 1921, was an Arab turning over a field with a very primitive plow; pulling the plow were an ox and a woman. Now, if it means that we have destroyed this romantic picture by bringing in tractors, combines, and threshing machines, this is true: we have.

It is always much easier, I have discovered, to make people cry or gasp than to make them think.

There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed.

But the individual was not a tool for something. He was the maker of tools. He was the one who must build. Even for the best purpose it is criminal to turn an individual into simply a means for some ultimate end. A society in which the dignity of the individual is destroyed cannot hope to be a decent society.

By the way, did you ever realize that if Moses would have turned right instead of left, we'd have had the oil, the Arabs would have had the sand?

There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

We can forgive [the Arabs] for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with [the Arabs] when they love their children more than they hate us...