Golda Meir (1898 – 1978)
Israeli politician and one of the founders of the State of Israel.
What person with any sense likes himself? I know myself too well to like myself.
Fashion is an imposition, a rein on freedom.
Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.
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 ...
Arab sovereignty in Jerusalem just cannot be. This city will not be divided — not half and half, not 60-40, not 75-25, nothing.
Those nuts that burn their bras and walk around all disheveled and hate men? They’re crazy. Crazy.
It is a dreadful thing to see the dead city. Next to the port I found children, women, the old, waiting for a way to leave. I entered the houses, there were houses where the coffee and pita bread were left on the table, and I could not avoid [thinking] that this, indeed, had been the picture in many Jewish towns [i.e., in Europe, during World War II]'.
I'm a slave to this leaf in a diary that lists what I must do, what I must say, every half hour.
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.
My delegation cannot refrain from speaking on this question — we who have such an intimate knowledge of boxcars and of deportations to unknown destinations that we cannot be silent.
I don’t know why you use a fancy French word like détente when there’s a good English phrase for it — cold war.
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!