Top 159 Quotes & Sayings by Shimon Peres - Page 2

What is wrong with the Iranians in addition to the nuclear bomb? This is the only country on Earth in the 21st century that has renewed imperialistic ambitions. They really want to become the hegemon of the Middle East in an age that gave up imperialism.

What you can do with relations is greater than what you can do with guns.

My goal in life was to serve my people, and the most important service for the Jewish people is building the land, and the basics of building the people and the country is working the land.

We are living in a world where image-making is important, so we ignore the facts.

My family's dream, and my own, was to live in Israel, and our eventual voyage to the port of Jaffa was like making a dream come true. Had it not been for this dream and this voyage, I would probably have perished in the flames, as did so many of my people, among them most of my own family.

The wars we fought were forced upon us. Thanks to the Israel Defense Forces, we won them all, but we did not win the greatest victory that we aspired to: release from the need to win victories.

Science doesn't have flags. Science doesn't have borders.

If you have children, you cannot feed them forever with flags for breakfast and cartridges for lunch. You need something more substantial. Unless you educate your children and spend less money on conflicts, unless you develop your science, technology and industry, you don't have a future.

When it comes to the Sunnis and Shiites, it is not for the United States or for us or for anyone else to settle who was the heir of Muhammad. This is a Muslim and Arab problem, and they have to deal with it.

Let all of us turn from bullets to ballots, from guns to shovels.

I dreamed of a future as a muscular, tanned, kibbutznik, who plowed the fertile fields of the Jezreel Valley in the day, sang religiously in the dining hall in the evening, and fiercely guarded the farmland at night, riding a noble horse.

You can kill a body, but you cannot kill the great and noble idea of peace.

I never was after money. It never attracted me.

David Ben-Gurion was a mythic figure, the founding father of Israel and a modern-day prophet, but he was also a real man who stormed through history on human legs. It was my great privilege to know him and work with him for many years.

I felt that if I could make the world better for the young, that would be the greatest thing we can do.

It is not rifles but people who triumph, and the conclusion from all the wars is that we need better people, not better rifles - to win wars, and mainly to avoid them.

When I am speaking about American presidents, I have to speak about my very special relations with President Clinton. He contributed more to peace than anybody else in the American sense.

As president, I was more successful; I had more opportunity than as prime minister. Why? I didn't have the power to give orders, to command, but I had the opportunity to call people to volunteer. In my period of presidency, I never heard the word 'no.'

A politician and a government should be judged by one way only: on the record of what you do or did, not on what you say.

I have one weakness. I don't like vacations. I like to work.

I thought all my life that optimists and pessimists pass away the same way, so why be a pessimist?

There is a real need to construct a different Middle East. The Middle East must change because the world has changed. And instead of oppositional armies that are fighting usually one against another, now we have a net of terrorists that are trying to destroy everything. They are not two; they are hundreds.

From my earliest youth, I have known that while one is obliged to plan with care the stages of one's journey, one is entitled to dream, and keep dreaming, of its destination. A man may feel as old as his years yet as young as his dreams.

One of the most important branches of the Egyptian economy is tourism. No bikinis, no tourism. So they have to decide what to do.

I have the highest respect for Obama. I have worked with 10 American presidents, both Republicans and Democrats. As far as Israeli security is concerned, he has done the most that an American president can do.

For 60 years, I was the most controversial figure in the country, and suddenly, I'm the most popular man in the land. Truth be told, I don't know when I was happier: then or now.

I knew that the most important thing a man has is in his head, and from a young age, I often studied the head structure of each person, hoping to crack his codes. I considered a high forehead a gift from God.

When I was a child, Israel was a legend more than a reality. She emerged from a dream, and today she has surpassed that dream.

The signing of the Israel-PLO accord is more than a political milestone. It is a transformative event which touches every Jewish family - physically, emotionally, spiritually.

We are the only country who is an ally of the United States that never asked for American soldiers.

You can kill a thousand; you can bring an end to life; you cannot kill an idea.

The president of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map.

Democracy wants to win by reason, not by arms or by any other material damage, because, look, I don't have to remind you that I am totally for peace. It is my greatest dream. It was and will remain so.

It's better to be controversial for the right reasons, than to be popular for the wrong reasons.

Until the Yom Kippur War, in 1973, until then Israel didn't have a chance but to fight for her life. We were attacked five times, outgunned, outnumbered, on a small piece of land, and our main challenge was to remain alive.

Our problem is not to submit to the differences but to overcome them.

If you eat three times a day, you become fat. If you read three times a day, you become wise. It's better to be wise than fat.

Leading the Jewish people is not easy -- we are a divided, obstinate, highly individualistic people who have cultivated faith, sharp wittedness and polemics to a very high level.

The Holocaust is a great warning to us all. We shall never forget our sisters and brothers. We have to ensure it is not repeated and to ensure we never go back to the days when humans behaved as beasts. Forgetfulness is a menace, we must remember.

In any democratic country you have more than one view.

I don't think anybody who carries a rifle carries the future. Because I don't believe that you can really change the world by killing and shooting. You have the change it by creating and competing.

I read when I get up in the morning, when I can during the day and every single evening. Most of my weekends are spent reading great books. Books are my constant companions. If you eat three times a day you'll be fed. But if you read three times a day you'll be wise.

To find a cause that's larger than yourself and then to give your life to it.

Optimists and pessimists die the exact same death, but they live very different lives!

In many ways, the media today makes dictatorship impossible. But it also makes democracy intolerable.

Without freedom you cannot have real peace.

We have to take care about nature as much as nature is taking care about us. Nature is very kind with us. And if you want to enjoy the gifts of nature and the promises of nature, we have to defer to nature and its needs, its rules, its norms.

The history of Israel is divided into two parts. One, under attack that we have had to defend ourselves. When you defend yourself your thinking is totally different from when you want to make peace. So under attack you behave like if you want a hawk, when peace comes you become a dove.

Governments have budgets but no money, companies have money but no budgets.

I've worked with 10 presidents. It's a record. I worked with Republicans and Democrats. All of them when it came to Israel were, movingly, friendly. From Truman, who was the first to recognize Israel 11 minutes after the U.N. resolution, to Obama. When it comes to the major issues of security and strategy, we are together, completely.

You're as young as your dreams, not as old as your calendar

If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact - not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.

We should use our imagination more than our memory.

Polls are like perfume-nice to smell, dangerous to swallow.

It's a morality that keeps humans human.

I do not know anybody that is threatening Iran. It is a safe country.

I am leaving the office but am not leaving the battle for peace.

The most important thing in life is to dare. The most complicated thing in life is to be afraid. The smartest thing in the world is to try to be a moral person.

From my earliest youth, I have known that while one is obliged to plan with care the stages of one's journey, one is entitled to dream, and keep dreaming, of its destination.

The foes now are universal - poverty, famine, religious radicalization, desertification, drugs, proliferation of nuclear weapons, ecological devastation. They threaten all nations, just as science and information are the potential friends of all nations. Classical diplomacy and strategy were aimed at identifying enemies and confronting them. Now they have to identify dangers, global or local, and tackle them before they become disasters.