Golda Meir Short Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
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 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
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
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
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
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