39 Quotes by Abba Eban

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.

You can't achieve anything without getting in someone's way

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

Consensus is what many people say in chorus but do not believe as individuals.

Time and again these governments have rejected proposals today - and longed for them tomorrow.

Lest Arab governments be tempted out of sheer routine to rush into impulsive rejection, let me suggest that tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.

Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives.

The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be.

Our intention to regard the closing of the Straits as a casus belli was communicated...to the foreign ministers of those states which had supported international navigation in the Straits in 1957 and thereafter. There can be no doubt that these warnings reached Cairo. One thing was now clear. If Nasser imposed a blockade, the explosion would ensue not from 'miscalculation', but from an open-eyed and conscious readiness for war.