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 EBANSalvation, the prophets tell us, is preconditioned by repentance. The redeeming act of God waits upon man’s initiative.
More Abba Eban Quotes
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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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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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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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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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His ignorance is encyclopedic.
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Better to be disliked than pitied.
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Human beings act intelligently only after they have exhausted the alternatives
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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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Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
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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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History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other 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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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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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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Playing the game I have learned the meaning of humility. It has given me an understanding of futility of the human effort.
ABBA EBAN