Golda Meir

“We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

“Don't be so humble - you're not that great.”

“To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man.”

“Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.”

“We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go.”

“Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!”

“I can honestly say that I was never affected by the question of the success of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do, I was for it regardless of the possible outcome.”

“We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown and when strawberries bloom in Israel.”

“We can forgive you for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for forcing us to kill your sons.”

“Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either.”

“Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life.”

“I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.”

“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.”

“The world hates a Jew who hits back. The world loves us only when we are to be pitied.”

“It is not a matter of what the Arabs will do, but what we will do.”

“It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don't want victories anymore.”

“There was no such thing as Palestinians.”

“We say 'peace' and the echo comes back from the other side, 'war'.”