Top 50 Shimon Peres Quotes

The Middle East is ailing. The malady stems from pervasive violence, shortages of food, water and educational opportunities, discrimination against women and – the most virulent cause of all – the absence of freedom.

The Jews’ greatest contribution to history is dissatisfaction! We’re a nation born to be discontented. Whatever exists we believe can be changed for the better.

It is not rifles but people who triumph, and the conclusion from all the wars is that we need better people, not better rifles – to win wars, and mainly to avoid them.

We asked the workers to give up 25 percent of their salaries. Imagine! We asked the industrialists to freeze all costs, no matter what the inflation is.

There is a real need to construct a different Middle East. The Middle East must change because the world has changed. And instead of oppositional armies that are fighting usually one against another, now we have a net of terrorists that are trying to destroy everything. They are not two; they are hundreds.

In the Middle East, the conflict today is a matter of generations and not of cultures.

That was my first lesson from Ben-Gurion. Then I saw him making peace, and I saw him making war. He mobilized me before the war. The man was a very rare combination between a real intellectual and a born leader. There is a contradiction between the two.

Look, Israel doesn’t intend to introduce nuclear weapons, but if people are afraid that we have them, why not? It’s a deterrent.

The signing of the Israel-PLO accord is more than a political milestone. It is a transformative event which touches every Jewish family – physically, emotionally, spiritually.

When you have two alternatives, the first thing you have to do is to look for the third that you didn’t think about, that doesn’t exist.

You can kill a body, but you cannot kill the great and noble idea of peace.

One of the things the United States does well is building coalitions. What the U.S. knows is that if you don’t have a coalition with you, you will have a coalition against you. I don’t want to see China and Russia on the side of Iran more strongly than they are.

Now, I learned soon enough, that among the three, two don’t trust the third one – the third one is the government. Both industry and unions feel the government is a talking organization and a spending organization.

For 60 years, I was the most controversial figure in the country, and suddenly, I’m the most popular man in the land. Truth be told, I don’t know when I was happier: then or now.

Israel’s doors are open to collaboration with Bulgaria.

The wars we fought were forced upon us. Thanks to the Israel Defense Forces, we won them all, but we did not win the greatest victory that we aspired to: release from the need to win victories.

I learned that public service is a privilege that must be based on moral foundations.

The internet, Facebook and Twitter have created mass communications and social spaces that regimes cannot control.

Israel was born under the British mandate. We learned from the British what democracy means, and how it behaves in a time of danger, war and terror. We thank Britain for introducing freedom and respect of human rights both in normal and demanding circumstances.

The Iranian regime suppresses its own people as well as others in the region. It prevents peace by sponsoring terror globally. With the ultimate weapon that it is deceptively developing, the regime aims to gain hegemony over the entire Middle East and hold the world’s economy hostage.

Look, I worked with American Republican presidents and Democratic presidents, all of them, and each of them has shown a deep and profound friendship to Israel, you know? I can’t remember anybody who was in that sense negative as far as Israel is concerned.

I think peace should be done not only among governments but among people. It was impossible before the Facebook.

From my earliest youth, I have known that while one is obliged to plan with care the stages of one’s journey, one is entitled to dream, and keep dreaming, of its destination. A man may feel as old as his years yet as young as his dreams.

In order to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear country you have to introduce a system of verification and inspection.

There is no alternative to peace. There is no sense to go to war.

My heart goes out to the brave citizens of Syria, who each day risk and even sacrifice their lives to achieve freedom from a murderous regime. We in Israel welcome the historic struggle to forge democratic, peace-loving governments in our region.

You know when civilization began? With the invention of the mirror.

I joined the army as a private. I was offered a rank at that time, but I refused. I preferred to remain a private. First of all, I wasn’t taken by ranks, and before I knew it, they put me in the most sensitive positions anyway.

I was learning, as I did in the Ministry of Defense. I never knew, but I always learned.

They thought that I was a man with reasonable judgment, so I was never under pressure from my parents; I could do whatever I wanted. I never had a negative word from them, nothing whatsoever.

Bringing an end to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians may help the young Arab generation to realise their aspirations. Israel is more than willing to offer our experience in building a modern economy in spite of limited resources to the whole region.

Early in the morning, I fell in love with the girl that later on became my wife. At that time, we were so naive. I wanted to charm her, so I read her Capital by Marx. I thought somehow she would be convinced by the strength of his criticism about capital.

My greatest mistake is that my dreams were too small.

I dreamed of a future as a muscular, tanned, kibbutznik, who plowed the fertile fields of the Jezreel Valley in the day, sang religiously in the dining hall in the evening, and fiercely guarded the farmland at night, riding a noble horse.

We proved that the aggressors do not necessarily emerge as the victors, but we learned that the victors do not necessarily win peace.

There was one occasion when I was very young – eight years or seven years old – that Jewish businessmen went through the forest, and they were assassinated. And that was for the first time I saw in our paper where there were assassinations in our place.

Count the dreams of your mind; if the numbers of the dreams exceeds the number of achievements, you are young.

Israel has its attractions. It’s the most dramatic country in the world. Everybody’s engaged. Everybody argues. When I leave Israel, I get a little bit bored, you know?

In Israel, a land lacking in natural resources, we learned to appreciate our greatest national advantage: our minds. Through creativity and innovation, we transformed barren deserts into flourishing fields and pioneered new frontiers in science and technology.

Science doesn’t have flags. Science doesn’t have borders.

Today, the people are governing the governments. And when they begin to talk to each other, they are surprised, they can be friends. Why should we hate each other?

What you can do with relations is greater than what you can do with guns.

I have one weakness. I don’t like vacations. I like to work.

My goal in life was to serve my people, and the most important service for the Jewish people is building the land, and the basics of building the people and the country is working the land.

The older generation had greater respect for land than science. But we live in an age when science, more than soil, has become the provider of growth and abundance. Living just on the land creates loneliness in an age of globality.

If you have children, you cannot feed them forever with flags for breakfast and cartridges for lunch. You need something more substantial. Unless you educate your children and spend less money on conflicts, unless you develop your science, technology and industry, you don’t have a future.

If I tax them, in fact, I’m not taxing the capitalists, I am taxing the people who have saved, trusted. It was very controversial, those sorts of things. But finally, it worked out.

I knew that the most important thing a man has is in his head, and from a young age, I often studied the head structure of each person, hoping to crack his codes. I considered a high forehead a gift from God.

The United States is the only power in history that became great by giving and not by taking. I think the crisis was when the United States had more money than ideas. Money doesn’t produce money. Ideas produce money.

Poverty and ignorance, which beget terror, are not eradicated by firing artillery shells. Borders do not stop rockets, and barbed wire does not prevent terror.