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Golda Meir
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“... the modern woman asks herself: Is there something wrong with me if my children don't fill up my life?”
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“Can we today measure devotion to husband and children by our indifference to everything else?”
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“We have not the slightest doubt that eventually there will be peace and cooperation between us. This is a historic necessity for both peoples.”
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“The deserts of the Middle East are in need of water, not bombers.”
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“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.”
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“We have always said that in our wars with the Arabs we had a secret weapon — no alternative.”
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“It is true that we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don't want victories anymore.”
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“How does it feel to be a woman minister? I don't know; I've never been a man minister.”
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“A leader who doesn't hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.”
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“Don't be so humble — you're not that great.”
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“You can't improve on saying nothing.”
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“We intend to remain alive. Our neighbors want to see us dead. This is not a question that leaves much room for compromise.”
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“We don't want wars even when we win.”
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“We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown and when strawberries bloom in Israel.”
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“Women's Liberation is just a lot of foolishness. It's the men who are discriminated against. They can't bear children. And no one's likely to do anything about that.”
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“Zionism and pessimism are not compatible.”
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“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.”
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“When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.”
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“Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us forty years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!”
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“... to be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man.”
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“At work, you think of the children you've 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.”
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“... those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either.”
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“I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.”
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“... old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do.”
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“... 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.”
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“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.”
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“To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don't be.”
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“Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.”
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“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.'”
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“... only here could Jews live as of right, rather than sufferance, and only here Jews could be masters, not victims, of their fate.”
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“... Israel itself is the strongest guarantee against another Holocaust.”
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“It is always much easier, I have discovered, to make people cry or gasp than to make them think.”
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“It is not a sin to be seventy but it is also no joke.”
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“[Upon resigning:] I have had enough.”
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“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.”
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“As President Nixon says, presidents can do almost anything, and President Nixon has done many things that nobody would have thought of doing.”
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“The only alternative to war is peace and the only road to peace is negotiations.”
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“The world hates a Jew who hits back. The world loves us only when we are to be pitied.”
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“Whether women are better than men I cannot say — but I can say they are certainly no worse.”
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“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.”
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“Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.”
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“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?”
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“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.”
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“You'll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.”
Golda Meir, Russian-born Israeli prime minister, politician
(1898 - 1978)
Born: Golda Mabovitch. Known for a time as Golda Meyerson.