Tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.
ABBA EBANScience 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]
More Abba Eban Quotes
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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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History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
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Tragedy is the difference between what is and what could have been.
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A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.
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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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It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.
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Human beings act intelligently only after they have exhausted the alternatives
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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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Consensus is what many people say in chorus but do not believe as individuals.
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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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Better to be disliked than pitied.
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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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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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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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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.
ABBA EBAN