Top 64 Ben Gurion Quotes
#1. Sharon was a realist. He recognized, as did Ben-Gurion and Dayan, that the Arabs had as legitimate a claim to this land as we did, and that they possessed pride and courage and anger, against which no rejoinder existed except the sword.
Steven Pressfield
#2. We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!
Yitzhak Rabin
#3. Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan were self-proclaimed atheists.
Tariq Ali
#5. That was my first lesson from Ben-Gurion. Then I saw him making peace, and I saw him making war. He mobilized me before the war. The man was a very rare combination between a real intellectual and a born leader. There is a contradiction between the two.
Shimon Peres
#6. Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.
David Ben-Gurion
#7. Ours is a country built more on people than on territory. The Jews will come from everywhere: from France, from Russia, from America, from Yemen ... Their faith is their passport.
David Ben-Gurion
#8. The State of Israel will prove itself not by material wealth, not by military might or technical achievement, but by its moral character and human values.
David Ben-Gurion
#9. Israel will not discuss a peace involving the concession of any piece of territory. The neighboring states do not deserve an inch of Israel's land ... We are ready for exchange for peace.
David Ben-Gurion
#10. We regard it as our duty to declare that Jewish Jerusalem is an organic and inseparable part of the State of Israel, as it is an inseparable part of the history of Israel, of the faith of Israel.
David Ben-Gurion
#11. Referring to Palestinian refugees: We must do everything in our power to ensure that they never return.
David Ben-Gurion
#13. Courage is a special kind of knowledge: the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared.
David Ben-Gurion
#14. Thought is a strenuous art - few practice it, and then only at rare times.
David Ben-Gurion
#16. The assets of the Jewish National Home must be created exclusively through our own work, for only the product of the Hebrew labor can serve as the national estate.
David Ben-Gurion
#17. Without moral and intellectual independence, there is no anchor for national independence.
David Ben-Gurion
#18. Suffering makes a people greater, and we have suffered much. We had a message to give the world, but we were overwhelmed, and the message was cut off in the middle. In time there will be millions of us - becoming stronger and stronger - and we will complete the message.
David Ben-Gurion
#19. There are eleven million Jews in the world. I don't say that all of them will come here, but I expect several million, and with natural increase I can quite imagine a Jewish state of ten million.
David Ben-Gurion
#20. It is only in Hebrew that you feel the full meaning of it
all the associations which a different word has.
David Ben-Gurion
#22. In the midst of wanton aggression, we still call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to return to the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, with full and equal citizenship and due representation in its bodies and institutions - provisional or permanent.
David Ben-Gurion
#23. What matters is not what the goyim say, but what the Jews do.
David Ben-Gurion
#24. It's not enough to be up to date, you have to be up to tomorrow.
David Ben-Gurion
#25. Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves ... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.
David Ben-Gurion
#26. If I was an Arab leader I would never make [peace] with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country.
David Ben-Gurion
#28. If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I opt for the second alternative.
David Ben-Gurion
#29. We have preserved the book, and the book has preserved us.
David Ben-Gurion
#30. Israel has created a new image of the Jew in the world - the image of a working and an intellectual people, of a people that can fight with heroism.
David Ben-Gurion
#32. We consider that the United Nations' ideal is a Jewish ideal.
David Ben-Gurion
#34. The present map of Palestine was drawn by the British mandate. The Jewish people have another map which our youth and adults should strive to fulfill: from the Nile to the Euphrates.
David Ben-Gurion
#35. Under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellahs or worked by them. Only if a fellah leaves his place of settlement, should we offer to buy his land, at an appropriate price.
David Ben-Gurion
#36. We offer peace and neighborliness to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Hebrew nation for the common good of all.
David Ben-Gurion
#37. Terrorism benefits the Arabs, it may lay waste the Yishuv and shake Zionism. But to follow in the Arabs' footsteps and ape their deeds is to be blind to the gulf between us. Our aims and theirs run counter: methods calculated to further theirs, are ruinous to us.
David Ben-Gurion
#38. The Arabs of the land of Israel [ Palestinians] have only one functionleft to them
to run away.
David Ben-Gurion
#39. If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.
David Ben-Gurion
#40. If the antisemites want to hate, let them hate, and let them go to hell.
David Ben-Gurion
#41. The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.
David Ben-Gurion
#43. It's not a matter of maintaining the status quo. We have to create a dynamic state, oriented towards expansion.
David Ben-Gurion
#44. To shatter even the largest stones on earth, it takes only a small quantity of explosive powder.
David Ben-Gurion
#45. From Jewish terrorism against Arabs it is a short step to Jewish terrorism against Jews.
David Ben-Gurion
#46. We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.
David Ben-Gurion
#47. We will make a great and awful mistake if we fail to settle Hebron, neighbor and predecessor of Jerusalem, with a large Jewish settlement, constantly growing and expanding, very soon. This will also be a blessing to the Arab neighbors. Hebron is worthy to be Jerusalem's sister.
David Ben-Gurion
#48. We do not want to create a situation like that which exists in South Africa, where the whites are the owners and rulers, and the blacks are the workers. If we do not do all kinds of work, easy and hard, skilled and unskilled, if we become merely landlords, then this will not be our homeland
David Ben-Gurion
#50. We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do return
David Ben-Gurion
#51. When a Jew, in America or in South Africa, talks to his Jewish companions about 'our' government, he means the government of Israel.
David Ben-Gurion
#52. The great Jewish scientists and philosophers of the last few generations - Spinoza, Einstein, Freud, Robert Oppenheimer and others - were natives of Europe and America.
David Ben-Gurion
#54. No city in the world, not even Athens or Rome, ever played as great a role in the life of a nation for so long a time, as Jerusalem has done in the life of the Jewish people.
David Ben-Gurion
#55. We don't consider manual work as a curse, or a bitter necessity, not even as a means of making a living. We consider it as a high human function, as the basis of human life, the most dignified thing in the life of the human being, and which ought to be free, creative. Men ought to be proud of it.
David Ben-Gurion
#56. It is in the Negev that the creativity and pioneer vigor of Israel shall be tested.
David Ben-Gurion
#57. We must do everything to insure they [the Palestinians] never do return ... The old will die and the young will forget.
David Ben-Gurion
#58. We must assist the British in the war as if there were no White Paper and we must resist the White Paper as if there were no war.
David Ben-Gurion
#61. In the land of Israel was born the Jewish nation. There came an order to kill the religious and social spirit of the people ... And after the nation turned back to its land with strength, it protected it steadfastly ...
David Ben-Gurion
#62. Not the absorption capacity of the land, but the creative ability of a people, is the true yardstick with which we can measure the immigration potentialities of the land.
David Ben-Gurion
#63. In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.
David Ben-Gurion
#64. The most dangerous enemy to Israel's security is the intellectual inertia of those who are responsible for security.
David Ben-Gurion
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