Golda Meir Quotes

#1. It isnt enough to believe in something; you have to have the stamina to meet obstacles and overcome them, to struggle.

Golda Meir

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

Golda Meir

#3. Don't be so humble, you're not that great.

Golda Meir

#4. This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.

Golda Meir

#5. You can get used to anything if you have to, even feeling perpetually guilty.

Golda Meir

#6. It is not only a matter, I believe, of religious observance and practice. To me, being Jewish means and has always meant being proud to be part of a people that has maintained its distinct identity for more than 2,000 years, with all the pain and torment that has been inflicted upon it

Golda Meir

#7. Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.

Golda Meir

#8. Whether women are better than men I cannot say ... but i can say they are certainly no worse.

Golda Meir

#9. Glorious bouquets and storms of applause are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys.

Golda Meir

#10. Any one who speaks in favor of bringing the Arab refugees back must also say how he expects to take the responsibility for it, if he is interested in the state of Israel. It is better that things are stated clearly and plainly: We shall not let this happen.

Golda Meir

#11. You can't improve on saying nothing.

Golda Meir

#12. We say peace and the echo comes back from the other side, war. We dont want wars even when we win.

Golda Meir

#13. Anybody who believes in something without reservation believes that this thing is right and should be, has the stamina to meet obstacles and overcome them.

Golda Meir

#14. I want to say to you, friends, that the Jewish community in Palestine is going to fight to the very end. If we have arms to fight with, we will fight with those, and if not, we will fight with stones in our hands.

Golda Meir

#15. Above all, this country is our own. Nobody has to get up in the morning and worry what his neighbors think of him. Being a Jew is no problem here.

Golda Meir

#16. A leader who doesn't hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.

Golda Meir

#17. From Russia I didn't bring out a single happy memory, only sad, tragic ones. The nightmare of pogroms, the brutality of Cossacks charging young Socialists, fear, shrieks of terror ...

Golda Meir

#18. 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.

Golda Meir

#19. To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don't be.

Golda Meir

#20. I'm a slave to this leaf in a diary that lists what I must do, what I must say, every half hour.

Golda Meir

#21. There's no difference between one's killing
and making decisions that will send others to kill.
It's exactly the same thing, or even worse.

Golda Meir

#22. By the way, did you ever realize that if Moses would have turned right instead of left, we'd have had the oil, the Arabs would have had the sand?

Golda Meir

#23. Men are committing the rapes. Let them be put under curfew.

Golda Meir

#24. 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!

Golda Meir

#25. There is no Zionism except the rescue of Jews.

Golda Meir

#26. You'll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

Golda Meir

#27. The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.

Golda Meir

#28. The modern woman asks herself: Is there something wrong with me if my children don't fill up my life?

Golda Meir

#29. Can we today measure devotion to husband and children by our indifference to everything else?

Golda Meir

#30. There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

Golda Meir

#31. Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you're aboard there's nothing you can do.

Golda Meir

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

Golda Meir

#33. The deserts of the Middle East are in need of water, not bombers.

Golda Meir

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

Golda Meir

#35. Don't be humble ... you're not that great.

Golda Meir

#36. Don't become cynical. Don't give up hope. Don't believe that everything is judged only by expediency. There is idealism in this world. There is human brotherhood.

Golda Meir

#37. Fashion is an imposition, a reign on freedom.

Golda Meir

#38. How can I explain the difference to me between America and Russia? ... the America I've known is a place where men on horseback escort union marchers, the Russia I've known is a place where men on horseback slaughter young Socialists and Jews.

Golda Meir

#39. As President Nixon says, presidents can do almost anything, and President Nixon has done many things that nobody would have thought of doing.

Golda Meir

#40. If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we'd rather be alive and have the bad image.

Golda Meir

#41. Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

Golda Meir

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

Golda Meir

#43. We don't want wars even when we win.

Golda Meir

#44. The only way to eliminate war is to love our children more than we hate our enemies.

Golda Meir

#45. There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed.

Golda Meir

#46. The Egyptians could run to Egypt, the Syrians into Syria. The only place we could run was into the sea, and before we did that we might as well fight.

Golda Meir

#47. It is always much easier, I have discovered, to make people cry or gasp than to make them think.

Golda Meir

#48. Being seventy is not a sin. It's not a joy, either.

Golda Meir

#49. If only political leaders would allow themselves to feel, as well as to think, the world might be a happier place.

Golda Meir

#50. We have always said that in our war with the Arabs we had a secret weapon - no alternative.

Golda Meir

#51. I have given instructions that I be informed everytime one of our soldiers is killed, even if it is in themiddle of the night. When President Nasser leavesinstructions that he is to be awakened in the middleof the night if an Egyptian soldier is killed, there willbe peace.

Golda Meir

#52. The only alternative to war is peace and the only road to peace is negotiations.

Golda Meir

#53. Those that perished in Hitler's gas chambers were the last Jews to die without standing up to defend themselves.

Golda Meir

#54. Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.

Golda Meir

#55. Show me a sensible person who likes himself or herself! I know myself too well to like what I see. I know but too well that I'm not what I'd like to be.

Golda Meir

#56. There will be peace in the Middle East only when the Arabs love their children more than they hate Israel.

Golda Meir

#57. I'm sure that someday children in schools will study the history of the men [sic] who made war as you study an absurdity. They'll be shocked, just as today we're shocked with cannibalism.

Golda Meir

#58. We don't thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient.

Golda Meir

#59. The dog that trots about finds a bone.

Golda Meir

#60. Moses dragged us through the desert to the one place in the Middle East where there is no oil.

Golda Meir

#61. We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.

Golda Meir

#62. I never did anything alone. Whatever was accomplished in this country was accomplished collectively.

Golda Meir

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

Golda Meir

#64. I don't know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there's a good English phrase for it - cold war.

Golda Meir

#65. How does it feel to be a woman minister? I don't know; I've never been a man minister.

Golda Meir

#66. Zionism and pessimism are not compatible.

Golda Meir

#67. Let me tell you the one thing I have against Moses. He took us forty years into the desert in order to bring us to the one place in the Middle East that has no oil!

Golda Meir

#68. The Soviet government is the most realistic regime in the world - no ideals.

Golda Meir

#69. Fashion is an imposition, a rein on freedom.

Golda Meir

#70. We only want that which is given naturally to all peoples of the world, to be masters of our own fate, not of others, and in cooperation and friendship with others.

Golda Meir

#71. Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.

Golda Meir

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

Golda Meir

#73. How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.

Golda Meir

#74. There is only one thing I hope to see before I die, and that is that my people should not need expressions of sympathy anymore.

Golda Meir

#75. I don't want to have a bad influence on anybody, but there's no point in my giving up cigarettes now. I won't die young.

Golda Meir

#76. At work, you think of the children you have left at home. At home, you think of the work you've left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself. Your heart is rent.

Golda Meir

#77. There is no such thing as a Palestinian people ... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist.

Golda Meir

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

Golda Meir

#79. It is not a sin to be seventy but it is also no joke.

Golda Meir

#80. I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.

Golda Meir

#81. Don't be humble. Your not that great.

Golda Meir

#82. We can forgive you for killing our children, but we can never forgive you for making us kill your children.

Golda Meir

#83. My dear, old age is like an airplane flying in a storm. Once you're in it there's nothing you can do. You can't stop a plane, you can't stop a storm, you can't stop time. So you might as well take it easy, with wisdom.

Golda Meir

#84. Women's liberation is just a lot of foolishness. It's men who are discriminated against. They can't bear children. And no one is likely to do anything about that.

Golda Meir

#85. Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

Golda Meir

#86. Arab sovereignty in Jerusalem just cannot be. This city will not be divided-not half and half, not 60-40, not 75-25, nothing.

Golda Meir

#87. Being seventy is not a sin.

Golda Meir

#88. Not being beautiful was the true blessing. Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome.

Golda Meir

#89. Don't be so humble - you are not that great.

Golda Meir

#90. Israel itself is the strongest guarantee against another Holocaust.

Golda Meir