It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.
ABBA EBANA nation writes its history in the image of its ideal.
More Abba Eban Quotes
-
-
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 -
A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement.
ABBA EBAN -
Israel is not an aviary.
ABBA EBAN -
A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.
ABBA EBAN -
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.
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 -
Better to be disliked than pitied.
ABBA EBAN -
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.
ABBA EBAN -
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]
ABBA EBAN -
Human beings act intelligently only after they have exhausted the alternatives
ABBA EBAN -
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 -
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 -
A nation writes its history in the image of its ideal.
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