A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement.
ABBA EBANIt is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.
More Abba Eban Quotes
-
-
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 EBAN -
A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.
ABBA EBAN -
His ignorance is encyclopedic.
ABBA EBAN -
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.
ABBA EBAN -
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 -
The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be.
ABBA EBAN -
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.
ABBA EBAN -
Human beings act intelligently only after they have exhausted the alternatives
ABBA EBAN -
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.
ABBA EBAN -
A nation writes its history in the image of its ideal.
ABBA EBAN -
Playing the game I have learned the meaning of humility. It has given me an understanding of futility of the human effort.
ABBA EBAN -
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.
ABBA EBAN -
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
ABBA EBAN -
Better to be disliked than pitied.
ABBA EBAN -
Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
ABBA EBAN