Quotes by Israeli authors

See the complete list of authors from Israel

"I explained that we would like to adjust our position on the Syrian question to theirs, as, in our view, they are the decisive factor in our relations with our neighbors, and Syria is unimportant"

Moshe Sharett, Statesman

"Curious people who have become accustomed to think that one cannot sustain the moral of the army without giving it the freedom to shed blood from time to time"

Moshe Sharett, Statesman

"An there is always the question: is it really proven that retaliatory actions solve the security problem?"

Moshe Sharett, Statesman

"I worked every day there, so I knew all the details. But I needed only some proof. So the proof was photos"

Mordechai Vanunu, Scientist

"But I am not allowed to speak to foreigners and I am not allowed to leave the country. So I'm not so happy"

Mordechai Vanunu, Scientist

"And I also take photos of hydrogen bomb, from another part of the building. It was not part of my job, but I succeeded to go and take photos of the hydrogen bomb"

Mordechai Vanunu, Scientist

"I also was producing, working on other materials for the hydrogen bomb. They call it lithium-6 and tritium. I was working on these and the only use for lithium-6 is the hydrogen bomb"

Mordechai Vanunu, Scientist

"From the sea came a boat with some Israeli commando soldiers who took me by the commando boat to the yacht and put me on the yacht. In the yacht I asked people, who are you. And they said we are Israelis, French and British"

Mordechai Vanunu, Scientist

"I was allowed to meet my family every two weeks for a half hour"

Mordechai Vanunu, Scientist

"I smuggled the camera, it was no problem to smuggle the camera there. And I took 60 photos, two films, during the time when there was no one in the control room, in the building"

Mordechai Vanunu, Scientist

"I couldn't sleep for two years, they tried to break my nerves. They used a lot of psychology to brainwash"

Mordechai Vanunu, Scientist

"We can just assume they have much more and powerful, more advanced technology, all the new computers, everything could be much more easier and help them to build much more and many more nuclear weapons"

Mordechai Vanunu, Scientist

"One of the things I wanted to introduce in The Same Sea beyond transcending the conflict, is the fact that deep down below all our secrets are the same"

Amos Oz, Writer

"I was born and bred in a tiny, low-ceilinged ground-floor apartment"

Amos Oz, Writer

"Well, my definition of a tragedy is a clash between right and right"

Amos Oz, Writer

"I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music"

Amos Oz, Writer

"I recommend the art of slow reading"

Amos Oz, Writer

"I find the family the most mysterious and fascinating institution in the world"

Amos Oz, Writer

"But The Same Sea is set precisely in this Israel, which never makes it to the news headlines anywhere. It is a novel about everyday people far removed from fundamentalism, fanaticism nationalism, or militancy of any sort"

Amos Oz, Writer

"In many ways, I regard Sharon and Arafat as birds of a feather"

Amos Oz, Writer

"But for 30 years, Orthodox leaders have tipped the balance between hawks and doves, and have been in a position to determine who forms a coalition and who runs the country"

Amos Oz, Writer

"A conflict begins and ends in the hearts and minds of people, not in the hilltops"

Amos Oz, Writer

"It is crystal clear to me that if Arabs put down a draft resolution blaming Israel for the recent earthquake in Iran it would probably have a majority, the U.S. would veto it and Britain and France would abstain"

Amos Oz, Writer

"If we don't stop somewhere, if we don't accept an unhappy compromise, unhappy for both sides, if we don't learn how to unhappily coexist and contain our burned sense of injustice - if we don't learn how to do that, we end up in a doomed state"

Amos Oz, Writer

"I wrote a novel about Israelis who live their own lives on the slope of a volcano. Near a volcano one still falls in love, one still gets jealous, one still wants a promotion, one still gossips"

Amos Oz, Writer

"I have seen for the first time in 100 years of conflict, the two peoples - the Israeli people and the Palestinian people - are ahead of their leaderships"

Amos Oz, Writer

"All of my novels are democracies"

Amos Oz, Writer

"The things I learned from the army - and I think it was a lesson for life - was how to work in unison with other people. How to take responsibility"

Oded Fehr, Actor

"The enemy resembles us. Therefore, he needs to be approached not as an assembly of 'targets' to be destroyed one by one; but as a living, intelligent entity capable of acting and reacting"

Martin van Creveld, Historian

"Sun Tzu does not need my praise. His work has lived for over two thousand years, and will surely live for another two thousand without any help from me"

Martin van Creveld, Historian

"It is simply not true that war is solely a means to an end, nor do people necessarily fight in order to obtain this objective or that. In fact, the opposite is true: people very often take up one objective or another precisely in order that they may fight"

Martin van Creveld, Historian

"In the future as in the past, both Clausewitz and Sun Tzu will undoubtedly have a lot to offer"

Martin van Creveld, Historian

"No Arab ruler will consider the peace process seriously so long as he is able to toy with the idea of achieving more by the way of violence"

Yitzhak Rabin, Statesman

"The best part of being a vegan is the purity and peace of mind one experiences and the strong connection I feel to the animal kingdom"

Uri Geller, Entertainer

"I've seen lights in the sky, I've seen UFOs, I've even seen something on the ground that I can't explain, but I've never actually seen a being. I wish I had"

Uri Geller, Entertainer

"When I started this project, I was a young architect. I was very apprehensive about any changes to the design. Whether I wanted to or not, I learned that you can accept some changes to its form without compromising its intent. But it's a leap of faith that I didn't want to make initially - to put it mildly"

Michael Arad, Architect

"I have no choice but to fight them every step of the way. I can't tell you how many other stupid ideas have been proposed over the last two years"

Michael Arad, Architect

"The world is no longer against us"

Yitzhak Rabin, Statesman

"It is not worth the paper it is written on unless it is backed by the kind of force that will make the other side consider the penalties too heavy to break the agreement"

Yitzhak Rabin, Statesman

"I believe that it is my responsibility as the prime minister of Israel to do whatever can be done to exploit the unique opportunities that lie ahead of us to move towards peace. Not everything can be done by one act"

Yitzhak Rabin, Statesman

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