“Better to be disliked than pitied.”

Salvation, the prophets tell us, is preconditioned by repentance. The redeeming act of God waits upon man’s initiative.

Our intention to regard the closing of the Straits as a casus belli was communicated…to the foreign ministers of those states which had supported international navigation in the Straits in 1957 and thereafter.

Consensus is what many people say in chorus but do not believe as individuals.

His ignorance is encyclopedic.

One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all.

Tragedy is the difference between what is and what could have been.

Nobody does Israel any service by proclaiming its ‘right to exist.’ Israel’s right to exist, like that of the United States, Saudi Arabia and 152 other states, is axiomatic and unreserved.

Human beings act intelligently only after they have exhausted the alternatives

You can’t achieve anything without getting in someone’s way. You can’t be detached and effective.

Israel is not an aviary.

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.

A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement.

I think that this is the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender.

Tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.

Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don’t worship it. Feed it. [Addressing a group of prospective contributors to an Israeli scientific research program]