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 EBANOne 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.
More Abba Eban Quotes
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Human beings act intelligently only after they have exhausted the alternatives
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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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A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.
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Tragedy is the difference between what is and what could have been.
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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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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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Better to be disliked than pitied.
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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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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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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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His ignorance is encyclopedic.
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Israel is not an aviary.
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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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Consensus is what many people say in chorus but do not believe as individuals.
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