David Ben-Gurion Quotations

Thought is a strenuous art - few practice it, and then only at rare times.

In order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.

Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles is not a realist.

If an expert says it can't be done, get another expert.

Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.

In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.

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.

Without moral and intellectual independence, there is no anchor for national independence.

Courage is... the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared.

The great Jewish scientists and philosophers of the last few generations - Spinoza, Einstein, Freud, Robert Oppenheimer and others - were natives of Europe and America.

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.

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.

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.

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.

After eighty, there are no enemies, only survivors.

Referring to Palestinian refugees: "We must do everything in our power to ensure that they never return.

The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan: one does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.

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.

Those who today murdered our people in an ambush not only plotted to murder some Jews but intended to provoke us... The Arabs stand to gain from such a development. They want the country to be in a state of perpetual pogrom.... Any further bloodshed [by the Jews] will only bring political advantage to the Arabs and harm us... Our strength is in the defense... and this strength will give us political victory if England and the world will know that we are defending ourselves rather than attacking.

Which are you first, a Jew or an American? A Jew.

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.

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.

This life as a simple citizen and laborer has its benefits not only for the person himself but perhaps also for his country. After all, there is room for only one Prime Minister, but for those who make the desert bloom there is room for hundreds, thousands and even millions. And the destiny of the state is in the hands of the many rather than of a single individual. There are times when an individual feels he should do those things which only can and should be done by the many.

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.

We consider that the United Nations' ideal is a Jewish ideal.

The old will die and the young will forget.

We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai.

We must expel Arabs and take their places.

It is only in Hebrew that you feel the full meaning of it -- all the associations which a different word has.

The past is our very being.

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.

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.

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.

When a Jew, in America or in South Africa, talks to his Jewish companions about 'our' government, he means the government of Israel.

The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.

The law is whatever people determine it to be.

The trebling of the population in this small and impoverished country, flowing with milk and honey but not with sufficient water, rich in rocks and sand dunes but poor in natural resources and vital raw materials, has been no easy task: Indeed, practical men, with their eyes fixed upon things as they are, regarded it as an empty and insubstantial utopian dream.

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.

A partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning. ... I am certain that we well not be prevented from settling in the other parts of the country, either by mutual agreements with our Arab neighbors or by some other means. . . [If the Arabs refuse] we shall have to speak to them in another language. But we shall only have another language if we have a state.

What matters is not what the goyim say, but what the Jews do.

To be realistic, you have to believe in miracles.

From Jewish terrorism against Arabs it is a short step to Jewish terrorism against Jews.

We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do return

The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.

You must talk to us as equals, or not talk to us at all.

The most dangerous enemy to Israel's security is the intellectual inertia of those who are responsible for security.

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.

It's not a matter of maintaining the status quo. We have to create a dynamic state, oriented towards expansion.

We have preserved the Book, and the Book has preserved us.

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

To shatter even the largest stones on earth, it takes only a small quantity of explosive powder.

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. . . .

Israel's economic and cultural progress is due to three things: the pioneering spirit that inspires the best of our immigrant and Israeli youth, who respond to the challenge of our desolute areas and the ingathering of the exiles; the feeling of Diaspora Jewry that they are partners in the enterprise of Israel's resurgence in the ancient homeland of the Jewish people; and the power of science, and technology which Israel unceasingly, and not without success, tries to enhance.

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.

The Arabs of the land of Israel [ Palestinians] have only one functionleft to them -- to run away.

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.

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.

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.

A Jew is anyone who says he is.

It is in the Negev that the creativity and pioneer vigor of Israel shall be tested.

Since I invoke Torah so often, let me state that I don't personally believe in the God it postulates ... I am not religious, nor were the majority of the early builders of Israel believers. Yet their passion for this land stemmed from the Book of Books ... [The Bible is] the single most important book in my life.

A Christian state should be established [in Lebanon], with its southern border on the Litani river. We will make an alliance with it. When we smash the Arab Legion's strength and bomb Amman, we will eliminate Transjordan too, and then Syria will fall. If Egypt still dares to fight on, we shall bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo.... And in this fashion, we will end the war and settle our forefathers' account with Egypt, Assyria, and Aram.

We must do everything to insure they [the Palestinians] never do return.... The old will die and the young will forget.

Let me first tell you one thing: It doesn't matter what the world says about Israel; it doesn't matter what they say about us anywhere else. The only thing that matters is that we can exist here on the land of our forefathers. And unless we show the Arabs that there is a high price to pay for murdering Jews, we won't survive.

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.

Everybody sees a difficulty in the question of relations between Arabs and Jews. But not everybody sees that there is no solution to this question. No solution! There is a gulf, and nothing can bridge it... We, as a nation, want this country to be ours; the Arabs, as a nation, want this country to be theirs.

It's not enough to be up to date, you have to be up to tomorrow.

If I was an Arab leader I would never make [peace] with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country.

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.

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.

I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?

If the antisemites want to hate, let them hate, and let them go to hell.

We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.