Moshe Dayan Quotes

#1. Our American friends offer us money, arms, and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice.

Moshe Dayan

#2. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist.

Moshe Dayan

#3. To aim and hit, you need one eye only, and one good finger.

Moshe Dayan

#4. I have the strength to endure it all.

Moshe Dayan

#5. If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

Moshe Dayan

#6. We should demand his blood not from the Arabs of Gaza but from ourselves. Let us make our reckoning today.

Moshe Dayan

#7. Let us not be afraid to see the hatred that consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who sit around us and wait for the moment when their hands will be able to reach our blood.

Moshe Dayan

#8. There is no more Palestine. Finished.

Moshe Dayan

#9. If I had to resign every time the Cabinet disagrees with me, I could not last as a Defense Minister one week.

Moshe Dayan

#10. It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce the policy of strength toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness.

Moshe Dayan

#11. I know of nothing more exciting than war.

Moshe Dayan

#12. It isn't a secret that my heart is damaged. All the treatments and medications haven't been effective.

Moshe Dayan

#13. I know that plans and reality may be two different things, but I think my demands on life are minimal.

Moshe Dayan

#14. Israel cannot afford to stand against the entire world and be denounced as the aggressor.

Moshe Dayan

#15. Who needs such a long intestine, anyway?

Moshe Dayan

#16. I have traveled a long road from the battlefield to the peace table.

Moshe Dayan

#17. Most important, don't do anything you don't want.

Moshe Dayan

#18. Without [the settlements] the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) [Israeli Defense Force] would be a foreign army ruling a foreign population.

Moshe Dayan

#19. It lies upon the people's shoulders to prepare for the war, but it lies upon the Israeli army to carry out the fight with the ultimate object of erecting the Israeli Empire.

Moshe Dayan

#20. It is not in our hands to prevent the murder of workers ... and families ... but it is in our hands to fix a high price for our blood, so high that the Arab community and the Arab military forces will not be willing to pay it.

Moshe Dayan

#21. Soldiers of Israel, we have no aims of conquest. Our purpose is to bring to naught the attempts of the Arab armies to conquer our land.

Moshe Dayan

#22. After all, we are not children. It's time we planned our life.

Moshe Dayan

#23. If we lose this war, I'll just start another in my wife's name.

Moshe Dayan

#24. A new State of Israel with broad frontiers, strong and solid, with the authority of the Israel Government extending from the Jordan to the Suez Canal.

Moshe Dayan

#25. We have no solution ... You [Palestinians] shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads.

Moshe Dayan

#26. It was in our power to set high price for our blood, a price too high for the Arab community, the Arab army, or the Arab governments to think it worth paying.

Moshe Dayan

#27. We are a small nation, but strong.

Moshe Dayan

#28. I am not supposed to be an expert in every field. I am supposed to be an expert in picking experts.

Moshe Dayan

#29. Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.

Moshe Dayan

#30. Take the American declaration of Independence. It contains no mention of territorial limits. We are not obliged to fix the limits of the State.

Moshe Dayan

#31. I feel I've lived so long, and went through so much, that all I want is calm and rest.

Moshe Dayan

#32. It's a democracy and if I am outvoted, I have to accept the majority decisions.

Moshe Dayan

#33. Freedom is the oxygen of the soul

Moshe Dayan

#34. I have only one eye. Do you want me to look at the road or the at the speedometer.

Moshe Dayan

#35. The Old City of Jerusalem is in our hands.

Moshe Dayan

#36. The method of collective punishment so far has proved effective.

Moshe Dayan

#37. The Jews have opened fire, and they are unready to begin a war.

Moshe Dayan

#38. Before (the Palestinians) very eyes we are possessing the land and the villages where they and their ancestors have lived We are the generation of colonizers and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a house.

Moshe Dayan

#39. We could not guard every water pipeline from being blown up and every tree from being uprooted. We could not prevent every murder of a worker in an orchard or a family in their beds.

Moshe Dayan

#40. What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived.

Moshe Dayan

#41. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.

Moshe Dayan

#42. We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house.

Moshe Dayan

#43. I don't think we should be a model family living in a model home.

Moshe Dayan

#44. In two cases I did not fulfill my role as defense minister, in that I did not stop things that I was sure should have been stopped.

Moshe Dayan