Abba Eban Quotes

#1. Tragedy is the difference between what is and what could have been.

Abba Eban

#2. It [idolatry] nourishes mans ambition to domineer over his fellow man. Idolatry, therefore, is the source of all social and moral evil in the world.

Abba Eban

#3. History teaches us
that men and nations
only behave wisely
once they have exhausted
all other alternatives.

Abba Eban

#4. I think that this is the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender.

Abba Eban

#5. Human beings act intelligently only after they have exhausted the alternatives

Abba Eban

#6. Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives.

Abba Eban

#7. Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Abba Eban

#8. Israel is not an aviary.

Abba Eban

#9. Consensus is what many people say in chorus but do not believe as individuals.

Abba Eban

#10. One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all.

Abba Eban

#11. Playing the game I have learned the meaning of humility. It has given me an understanding of futility of the human effort.

Abba Eban

#12. A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement.

Abba Eban

#13. The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be.

Abba Eban

#14. Lest Arab governments be tempted out of sheer routine to rush into impulsive rejection, let me suggest that tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.

Abba Eban

#15. His ignorance is encyclopedic.

Abba Eban

#16. You can't achieve anything without getting in someone's way.

Abba Eban

#17. If Algeria introduced a resolution that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.

Abba Eban

#18. Better to be disliked than pitied.

Abba Eban

#19. Salvation, the prophets tell us, is preconditioned by repentance. The redeeming act of God waits upon man's initiative.

Abba Eban

#20. Zionism is nothing more, but also nothing less, than the Jewish People's sense of origin and destination in the Land linked eternally with its name. It is also the instrument whereby the Jewish Nation seeks an authentic fulfillment of itself.

Abba Eban

#21. Time and again these governments have rejected proposals today - and longed for them tomorrow.

Abba Eban

#22. Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it. Feed it.
[Addressing a group of prospective contributors to an Israeli scientific research program]

Abba Eban

#23. A nation writes its history in the image of its ideal.

Abba Eban

#24. It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

Abba Eban

#25. A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.

Abba Eban