“We say peace and the echo comes back from the other side, war. We dont want wars even when we win.”

My dear, old age is like an airplane flying in a storm. Once you’re in it there’s nothing you can do. You can’t stop a plane, you can’t stop a storm, you can’t stop time. So you might as well take it easy, with wisdom.

Men who have reached and passed forty-five, have a look as if waiting for the secret of the other world, and as if they were perfectly sure of having found out the secret of this.

You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

Being seventy is not a sin. It’s not a joy, either.

We don’t thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient.

Women’s liberation is just a lot of foolishness. It’s men who are discriminated against. They can’t bear children. And no one is likely to do anything about that.

Above all, this country is our own. Nobody has to get up in the morning and worry what his neighbors think of him. Being a Jew is no problem here.

It is always much easier, I have discovered, to make people cry or gasp than to make them think.

I never did anything alone. Whatever was accomplished in this country was accomplished collectively.

Israel itself is the strongest guarantee against another Holocaust.

The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.

Don’t be humble… you’re not that great.

Anybody who believes in something without reservation believes that this thing is right and should be, has the stamina to meet obstacles and overcome them.

The deserts of the Middle East are in need of water, not bombers.

We don’t want wars even when we win.

From Russia I didn’t bring out a single happy memory, only sad, tragic ones. The nightmare of pogroms, the brutality of Cossacks charging young Socialists, fear, shrieks of terror.

Most misfortunes are the results of misused time.

Out of clutter, find simplicity.

No man is happy who does not think himself so.

There is joy in self-forgetfulness.

The wolf on the hill is not as hungry as the wolf climbing the hill.

What affects one in a major way, affects all in a minor way.

Luck and destiny are the excuses of the world’s failures.

To be everywhere is to be nowhere.