Top 147 Quotes & Sayings by Ehud Olmert - Page 3

Have I made mistakes in my many years of political activity? Of course! I am sorry and regret them.

In my position as prime minister, I bear the highest responsibility for decisions.

The United States provides Israel with crucial security and economic aid and invaluable political backing in the international arena.

What's the logic of investing millions in agriculture if it will not pay off?

Every word I wrote in my book is documented, certified, true, and correct. The truth wins, and that is my picture.

Terrorist groups and their extremist state sponsors cannot be fought with kid gloves and flowery words of persuasion. As the U.S. has displayed in Afghanistan and in Iraq, only a vigilant and determined campaign of confrontation can deter and obstruct them.

As a citizen of a democratic state, I have always believed that when a prime minister is elected in Israel, even those who voted against him at the polls are obligated to desire his success.

As one of the participants in the Aqaba summit, I can testify that Israel fully expected the Palestinian Authority's newly reorganized and trained security agencies to take harsh action against the rejectionists who sought to wreck the peace process.

Terrorist organizations such as Hamas must be shut down.

As a young politician, I voted against the return of Sinai and peace with Egypt. I was mistaken.

I have found myself under a wave of investigation and criticism from the moment I was elected. Since my first days in the Prime Minister's Office I have had to fight against evil attacks while I have been busy making decisions on crucial matters related to Israel's security and existence.

Throughout the second intifada, America provided unprecedented support for Israel's struggle against Palestinian terrorism and Israel's construction of the security barrier.

When public figures write memoirs, there is always some indecision regarding how much they want to write of things as they were and how much they want to cut corners to avoid riling up others. I decided to write my memoirs exactly as they were, and I will not digress - not when things are ill at ease and not when they are comfortable.

I want to make one thing clear: I am proud to be a citizen of a country in which a prime minister can be investigated like any other citizen.

The legacies of Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, of Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein, stand as an inspiration for all who work for peace.

Leadership is tested not by one's capacity to survive politically but by the ability to make tough decisions in trying times.

Disengagement is a response to certain demographic realities, .. Within a few years, due to the higher Arab birth rate, Jews will become a minority in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. I don't want [Israel] to be South Africa because we don't believe in apartheid. We simply have to separate from the Palestinians so that we can control our own destinies.

There is no ceasefire. There will not be any ceasefire.

We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, we want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies.

We can never totally return to the indefensible pre-1967 borders, ... We simply cannot afford to make Israel 14.48 km (9 miles) wide again at its center. We can't allow the Palestinians to be a couple of [miles] from [Tel Aviv's] Ben-Gurion Airport in the age of shoulder-fire missiles with the capacity to shoot down jumbo jets. But that doesn't mean we must remain in every corner of the West Bank or in Gaza, where fewer than 10,000 Jews, living next to 1.3 million Palestinians, have been protected by twice as many soldiers.

I dont know that there is one serious American representative that will advise Israel to sit with a terrorist government and negotiate with them.

For thousands of years, we Jews have been nourished and sustained by a yearning for our historic land. I, like many others, was raised with a deep conviction that the day would never come when we would have to relinquish parts of the land of our forefathers. I believed and to this day still believe in our people's eternal and historic right to this entire land.

If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished.

Israeli lives are worth more than Palestinian ones.

The formula for the parameters of a unilateral solution are: To maximize the number of Jews; to minimize the number of Palestinians; not to withdraw to the 1967 border and not to divide Jerusalem.

I don't want to block every contact with the Palestinians, I think that would be a mistake, and I think that Abu Mazen has an independent status as democratically elected head of the Palestinian people, and it's important if I will talk with him.

Every prime minister... has the responsibility to provide security for his people.