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

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?

When certain seeds are planted, they nearly always grow.

More and more you empty your mind, more and more you come closer to the spirit in the body.

Yes, it was dangerous, but we are not put into this world, Mr. Burton, to avoid danger when an important fellow creature's life is at stake. You understand me?

Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous.

And our dreams, with what frivolity we have pared them like toenails, clipped them like ends of split hair.

No president can easily commit our sons and daughters to war.

I paint - I tend more to abstraction - but not as much as I would like to because of time. I would love to do sculpture - I've toyed with the idea of fitting in a sculpture course.

Some think that they will exercise power for the general good, but that is what all those with power have believed. Power is evil in itself, regardless of who exercises it.

Look at the optimism of Nature. Nothing can stop it. Only the ego makes humans pessimistic, and this causes suffering.

The real satisfaction from mathematics is in learning from others and sharing with others.