Golda Meir Quotes

Let me tell you the one thing I have against Moses. He took us forty years into the desert in order to bring us to the one place in the Middle East that has no oil!

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

We don't want wars even when we win.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 ...

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.

You can't improve on saying nothing.

Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either

Don't be humble. Your not that great.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

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

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

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

Israel itself is the strongest guarantee against another Holocaust.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Moses dragged us through the desert to the one place in the Middle East where there is no oil.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Being seventy is not a sin.

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

There is no Zionism except the rescue of Jews.

The dog that trots about finds a bone.

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.

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

In Israel, we read from right to left. [To Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State, who had written her that he considers himself 'an American first, Secretary of State second, and a Jew third']

Fashion is an imposition, a reign on freedom.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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