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.
ABBA EBANHistory teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
More Abba Eban Quotes
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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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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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You can’t achieve anything without getting in someone’s way. You can’t be detached and effective.
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A nation writes its history in the image of its ideal.
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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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Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
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Israel is not an aviary.
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Human beings act intelligently only after they have exhausted the alternatives
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A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.
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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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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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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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Tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.
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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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