Human beings act intelligently only after they have exhausted the alternatives
ABBA EBANA nation writes its history in the image of its ideal.
More Abba Eban Quotes
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Playing the game I have learned the meaning of humility. It has given me an understanding of futility of the human effort.
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Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
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Salvation, the prophets tell us, is preconditioned by repentance. The redeeming act of God waits upon man’s initiative.
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Israel is not an aviary.
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The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be.
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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]
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Tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.
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Tragedy is the difference between what is and what could have been.
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A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement.
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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.
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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.
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A nation writes its history in the image of its ideal.
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If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.
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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.
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Lest Arab governments be tempted out of sheer routine to rush into impulsive rejection, let me suggest that tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.
ABBA EBAN