Top 52 Quotes & Sayings by Moshe Dayan

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Israeli soldier Moshe Dayan.

Last updated on December 23, 2024.

Moshe Dayan was an Israeli military leader and politician. As commander of the Jerusalem front in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (1953–1958) during the 1956 Suez Crisis, but mainly as Defense Minister during the Six-Day War in 1967, he became a worldwide fighting symbol of the new state of Israel. In the 1930s, Dayan joined the Haganah, the pre-state Jewish defense force of Mandatory Palestine. He served in the Special Night Squads under Orde Wingate during the Arab revolt in Palestine and later lost an eye in a raid on Vichy forces in Lebanon during World War II. Dayan was close to David Ben-Gurion and joined him in leaving the Mapai party and setting up the Rafi party in 1965 with Shimon Peres. Dayan became Defence Minister just before the 1967 Six-Day War. After the Yom Kippur War of 1973, during which Dayan served as Defense Minister, he was blamed for the lack of preparedness; after some time he resigned. In 1977, following the election of Menachem Begin as Prime Minister, Dayan was expelled from the Labor Party because he joined the Likud-led government as Foreign Minister, playing an important part in negotiating the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

Israeli - Soldier | May 20, 1915 - October 16, 1981

Source: Wikipedia

I don't think we should be a model family living in a model home.

Moshe Dayan

I have only one eye. Do you want me to look at the road or the at the speedometer.

Moshe Dayan

I know that plans and reality may be two different things, but I think my demands on life are minimal.

Moshe Dayan

If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

Moshe Dayan

After all, we are not children. It's time we planned our life.

Moshe Dayan

To aim and hit, you need one eye only, and one good finger.

Moshe Dayan

The Jews have opened fire, and they are unready to begin a war.

Moshe Dayan

There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.

Moshe Dayan

If I had to resign every time the Cabinet disagrees with me, I could not last as a Defense Minister one week.

Moshe Dayan

I have the strength to endure it all.

Moshe Dayan

Most important, don't do anything you don't want.

Moshe Dayan

Israel cannot afford to stand against the entire world and be denounced as the aggressor.

Moshe Dayan

It's a democracy and if I am outvoted, I have to accept the majority decisions.

Moshe Dayan

It isn't a secret that my heart is damaged. All the treatments and medications haven't been effective.

Moshe Dayan

We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house.

Moshe Dayan

Soldiers of Israel, we have no aims of conquest. Our purpose is to bring to naught the attempts of the Arab armies to conquer our land.

Moshe Dayan

I have traveled a long road from the battlefield to the peace table.

Moshe Dayan

We are a small nation, but strong.

Moshe Dayan

There is no more Palestine. Finished.

Moshe Dayan

It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce the policy of strength toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness.

Moshe Dayan

Our American friends offer us money, arms, and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice.

Moshe Dayan

Who needs such a long intestine, anyway?

Moshe Dayan

The Old City of Jerusalem is in our hands.

Moshe Dayan

Let us not be afraid to see the hatred that consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who sit around us and wait for the moment when their hands will be able to reach our blood.

Moshe Dayan

The method of collective punishment so far has proved effective.

Moshe Dayan

Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.

Moshe Dayan

We could not guard every water pipeline from being blown up and every tree from being uprooted. We could not prevent every murder of a worker in an orchard or a family in their beds.

Moshe Dayan

We should demand his blood not from the Arabs of Gaza but from ourselves. Let us make our reckoning today.

Moshe Dayan

It was in our power to set high price for our blood, a price too high for the Arab community, the Arab army, or the Arab governments to think it worth paying.

Moshe Dayan

I feel I've lived so long, and went through so much, that all I want is calm and rest.

Moshe Dayan

We have no solution... You [Palestinians] shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads.

Moshe Dayan

I know of nothing more exciting than war.

Moshe Dayan

It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce 'the policy of strength' toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness.

Moshe Dayan

If we lose this war, I'll just start another in my wife's name.

Moshe Dayan

Before (the Palestinians) very eyes we are possessing the land and the villages where they and their ancestors have lived We are the generation of colonizers and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a house.

Moshe Dayan

What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived.

Moshe Dayan

We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab Village.

Moshe Dayan

Take the American declaration of Independence. It contains no mention of territorial limits. We are not obliged to fix the limits of the State.

Moshe Dayan

I am not supposed to be an expert in every field. I am supposed to be an expert in picking experts.

Moshe Dayan

The proposed policy [of raising the level of public service in the occupied territories] may clash with our intention to encourage emigration from both [Gaza] Strip and Judea and Samaria. Anyone who has practical ideas or proposal to encourage emigration-let him speak up. No idea or proposal is to be dismissed out of hand.

Moshe Dayan

Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.

Moshe Dayan

We should demand his blood not from the Arabs of Gaza but from ourselves... Let us make our reckoning today.

Moshe Dayan

We could not guard every water pipeline from being blown up and every tree from being uprooted. We could not prevent every murder of a worker in an orchard or a family in their beds. But it was in our power to set high price for our blood, a price too high for the Arab community, the Arab army, or the Arab governments to think it worth paying... It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce 'the policy of strength' toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness.

Moshe Dayan

It is not in our hands to prevent the murder of workers… and families… but it is in our hands to fix a high price for our blood, so high that the Arab community and the Arab military forces will not be willing to pay it.

Moshe Dayan

It lies upon the people's shoulders to prepare for the war, but it lies upon the Israeli army to carry out the fight with the ultimate object of erecting the Israeli Empire.

Moshe Dayan

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahalul, Gevat - in the place of Jibta, Sarid - in the place of Haneifs and Kefar Yehoshua - in the place of Tell Shaman. There is no one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.

Moshe Dayan

There is no more Palestine. Finished...

Moshe Dayan

Without [the settlements] the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) [Israeli Defense Force] would be a foreign army ruling a foreign population.

Moshe Dayan

During the last 100 years our people have been in a process of building up the country and the nation, of expansion, of getting additional Jews and additional settlements in order to expand the borders here. Let no Jew say that the process has ended. Let no Jew say that we are near the end of the road.

Moshe Dayan

A new State of Israel with broad frontiers, strong and solid, with the authority of the Israel Government extending from the Jordan to the Suez Canal.

Moshe Dayan

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist.

Moshe Dayan

In two cases I did not fulfill my role as defense minister, in that I did not stop things that I was sure should have been stopped.

Moshe Dayan