Top 112 Quotes & Sayings by Yair Lapid - Page 2

People like to invent enemies. It spares us the need to address complex worldviews.

I don't reject caution, but you also have to be careful about caution because there's a stage when it turns into paralysis.

People in Israel are sick and tired of the old politics.

I have written to Israel's friends around the world, including the U.S. Congress and the E.U., and asked them to make funding for the United Nations dependent on ending blatant discrimination against Israel at the U.N. Human Rights Council.

I used to have so many opinions before I learned the facts.

Succeeding in life is a difficult business - you need to work 16 hours a day, face failures along the way, remember that nobody owes you a thing, and take risks.

Every Jew is my brother, and I will not succumb to hate speech.

One of the hardest things is to create hope.

I want to do everything in my power to ensure the equality between all movements of Judaism in the state of Israel: Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform. In conversions, in budgets, in the eyes of the law. No one can claim ownership over the Jewish God.

I feel we're at risk that a whole generation of young Israelis, who went to the army, work hard, pay taxes, one day will look around and say, 'Hey, this country is going nowhere.'

The Human Rights Organisation deceives the world by calling itself a human rights council.

When the Americans see someone like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, who made billions thanks to their talent and determination, the first thing they say to themselves is, 'I want to be like him.' This, in many ways, is the engine that drives Western society: The desire to make it like the winners.

Israeli citizens deserve full-time ministers.

The views of religious-Zionist rabbis are of course worthy of being heard, yet they represent a very defined and very narrow camp within the Israeli spectrum. This is not the way to shape the perception of future division and brigade commanders.

I am a man of tomorrow, but I also live my past.

Corruption is when a politician uses public funds to deliver pistachio ice cream to his home and transfer garden furniture to his Caesarea villa, then requesting that the expenses be covered for the water in his pool and fights to get a private jet.

Israel's master strategy needs to be moving toward a regional arrangement that will enable a full normalization of relations with the Arab states and the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel.

I urge the senior members of the political system to form as broad a government as possible that would unite the moderate forces from the Left and Right so that we will be able to bring about real change in the State of Israel.

Israelis want peace and security, and Palestinians want peace and justice - these are two very different things, and this is the real gap we have to close.

Social revolutions are never simple.

The Palestinians must be brought to an understanding that Jerusalem will always remain under Israeli sovereignty and that there is no point for them in opening negotiations about Jerusalem.

Hebrew is the language I use to thank the Creator and, also, to swear on the road.

When someone doesn't react to changes, the changes turn against him.

How can Israel say that everyone is equal before the law - that you're equal before the law - when the law defines Judaism as the cultural, national and legislative basis for the state?

I am a Zionist.

I'm not telling you what to do on the Sabbath, and you won't tell me.

Judaism is a whole line of values that have existed for thousands of years, but the democratic idea is a new idea, and significant parts of it stand in contradiction to Judaism.

The Left doesn't understand the importance of God in the Israeli public discourse, and Yesh Atid does.

Jerusalem will remain under Israeli sovereignty and will not be divided.

Judaism shouldn't be the jailhouse of ideas but a liberator of ideas; not a disintegrator of people but what brings people together.

I'm willing to take a polygraph test to prove that I'm happy about Kahlon's return to politics. He's a good man, a man who cares. It's good to have people like that in politics, I have no problem with that.

Israel can't be the only country in the Western world not to have freedom of religion.

The Tower of David is important for Israel's heritage and existence because it is more than a tower, it is a symbol. It is more important than the Azrieli Towers.

The State of Israel was not established so that the anti-Semites will disappear but, rather, so we can tell them to get lost.

Yesh Atid is a Jewish, religious-secular party. Our DNA is center - both Left and Right. The difference between center-left and center-right is more emotional and hereditary than having to do with what people think about the Palestinians.

The greatest tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that everyone knows how it will end. We will divide up the region.

When I introduced my economic plan for the first time, people had mixed views because it's the largest cut in the history of Israeli budgets. We have a big deficit caused by the fact that the former government took upon itself too many obligations.

Being a Jew and an Israeli are inseparable things.

Israel is a tremendous success story. When I arrived, there were 600,000 Jews living here. Today there are close to 6 million. We have one of the world's top high-tech industries and a high standard of living. There is only one thing we haven't achieved: Making the country safer for Jews.

I felt that we had become a society ruled by sectors, by interest groups: Whoever's connected to the Israeli government gets more.

There is a difference between a small community being herded into a park and murdered and all of these communities joining forces to make sure that something like that will not happen again.

I decided to go into politics because my children are growing up, and I became worried about the ways things are being handled in this country. I felt there's a lost generation of people who feel misrepresented, and that they're doing their best for the country but the country is not doing its best for them. We are all looking at our children and wondering whether or not they will see their future in Israel. They looked at the country before the last elections and saw it becoming more and more Orthodox. There was a strong sense of unfairness.

Any man who is not a communist at the age of 20 is a fool.

The majority of Israelis want change, the Netanyahu era is coming to an end. That's not because security issues don't matter but because social and economic issues are dominating the agenda.

Orthodox Jews often ask you: "Are you an Israeli first, or a Jew?" I see no difference between the two. After all, I'm also simultaneously the son of my parents, the husband of my wife and the father of my children.

Israel is a long way from facing a threat to its very existence. We are too strong, both economically and militarily, for that. If anything threatens Israel, it is this form of paranoid thought that makes us think: "Oh God, they're going to kill us in two seconds! What should we do?"

When you look at the history of wars, they ultimately revolve around one claim: "My god is better than yours."

If you ask me 'What is the one great move you can make to improve the Israeli economy?' of course it will be signing an agreement with the Arab world about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This will change everything.

Me and apparently a lot of other people felt that the people who should benefit most from the country are the people who contribute the most, which is the middle class, who are drafted into the army, spend three years there and 25 years in the reserves. That is why I had enough votes to create out of nowhere the second-largest party in the country.

There is a wind of change, and if there is a wind of change on domestic issues, there is going to be a wind of change on Palestinian issues as well, it's not something done in one leap, it's a triple jump, but it's coming.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is the biggest problem, but small problems shape the daily lives of Israelis. Unless there happens to be a war going on, the Arab-Israeli conflict is irrelevant in daily life.

I don't think Israel's becoming more religious, I think its politics is becoming more religious. There's a difference.