Golda Meir Quotes

59 Sourced Quotes

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
I am also grateful that I live in a country whose people have learned how to go on living in a sea of hatred without hating those who want to destroy them and without abandoning their own vision of peace. To have learned this is a great art, the prescription for which is not written down anywhere. It is part of our way of life in Israel.

Golda Meir
The deserts of the Middle East are in need of water, not bombers.

Golda Meir
Can we today measure devotion to husband and children by our indifference to everything else?

Golda Meir
What person with any sense likes himself? I know myself too well to like myself.

Golda Meir
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
Israel itself is the strongest guarantee against another Holocaust.

Golda Meir
We intend to remain alive. Our neighbors want to see us dead. This is not a question that leaves much room for compromise.

Golda Meir
A story once went the rounds of Israel to the effect that Ben-Gurion described me as 'the only man' in his cabinet. What amused me about is that he (or whoever invented the story) thought that this was the greatest compliment that could be paid to a woman. I very much doubt that any man would have been flattered if I had said about him that he was the only woman in the government!

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

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

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

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

Golda Meir
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
My delegation cannot refrain from speaking on this question — we who have such an intimate knowledge of boxcars and of deportations to unknown destinations that we cannot be silent.

Golda Meir
At work, you think of the children you've 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
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
We have always said that in our war with the Arabs we had a secret weapon — no alternative. 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
It's no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do?... Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either.

Golda Meir
America is a great country. It has many shortcomings, many social inequalities, and it's tragic that the problem of the blacks wasn't solved fifty or even a hundred years ago, but it's still a great country, a country full of opportunities, of freedom! Does it seem nothing to you to be able to say what you like, even against the government, the Establishment?

Golda Meir
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
I prefer to stay alive and be criticized than be sympathized.

Golda Meir
Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do. You can't stop the plane, you can't stop the storm, you can't stop time. So one might as well accept it calmly, wisely.

Golda Meir
But the individual was not a tool for something. He was the maker of tools. He was the one who must build. Even for the best purpose it is criminal to turn an individual into simply a means for some ultimate end. A society in which the dignity of the individual is destroyed cannot hope to be a decent society.

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

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

Golda Meir
I thought that a Jewish state would be free of the evils afflicting other societies: theft, murder, prostitution... But now we have them all. And that's a thing that cuts to the heart...

Golda Meir