A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement.
ABBA EBANZionism is nothing more, but also nothing less, than the Jewish People’s sense of origin and destination in the Land linked eternally with its name.
More Abba Eban Quotes
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History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
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Better to be disliked than pitied.
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You can’t achieve anything without getting in someone’s way. You can’t be detached and effective.
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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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It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.
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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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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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His ignorance is encyclopedic.
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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.
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It [idolatry] nourishes mans ambition to domineer over his fellow man. Idolatry, therefore, is the source of all social and moral evil in the world.
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Zionism is nothing more, but also nothing less, than the Jewish People’s sense of origin and destination in the Land linked eternally with its name.
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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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Consensus is what many people say in chorus but do not believe as individuals.
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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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