Golda Meir Quotes

59 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

Golda Meir
We owe a responsibility not only to those who are in Israel but also to those generations that are no more, to those millions who have died within our lifetime, to Jews all over the world, and to generations of Jews to come. We hate war. We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown, and when strawberries bloom in Israel.

Golda Meir
Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

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

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

Golda Meir
Those nuts that burn their bras and walk around all disheveled and hate men? They're crazy. Crazy.

Golda Meir
I don't know why you use a fancy French word like détente when there's a good English phrase for it — cold war.

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

Golda Meir
The only alternative to war is peace and the only road to peace is negotiations.

Golda Meir
There were no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.

Golda Meir
What do you gain, Soviet Union, from this miserable policy? Where is your decency? Would it be a disgrace for you to give up this battle?

Golda Meir
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
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
We have not the slightest doubt that eventually there will be peace and cooperation between us. This is a historic necessity for both peoples.

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

Golda Meir
Only here could Jews live as of right, rather than sufferance, and only here Jews could be masters, not victims, of their fate.

Golda Meir
When peace comes, we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.

Golda Meir
I want to see a film, they send the Israeli army reserves to escort me! What kind of life is this?

Golda Meir
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
Once in a Cabinet we had to deal with the fact that there had been an outbreak of assaults on women at night. One minister suggested a curfew; women should stay home after dark. I said, 'But it's the men who are attacking the women. If there's to be a curfew, let the men stay home, not the women.'

Golda Meir
We say peace and the echo comes back from the other side, war. We don't want wars even when we win.

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

Golda Meir
One of the first sights that shocked me, when I came to Israel in 1921, was an Arab turning over a field with a very primitive plow; pulling the plow were an ox and a woman. Now, if it means that we have destroyed this romantic picture by bringing in tractors, combines, and threshing machines, this is true: we have.

Golda Meir
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