Golda Meir Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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!

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?

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Israel itself is the strongest guarantee against another Holocaust.

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

You can't improve on saying nothing.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Zionism and pessimism are not compatible.

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.