A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement.
ABBA EBANTragedy is the difference between what is and what could have been.
More Abba Eban Quotes
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Consensus is what many people say in chorus but do not believe as individuals.
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Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
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A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.
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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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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 the difference between what is and what could have been.
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Tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.
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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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You can’t achieve anything without getting in someone’s way. You can’t be detached and effective.
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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.
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Better to be disliked than pitied.
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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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History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
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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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