263 Quotes by Shimon Peres

If world is suspicious that Israel may detonate nuclear bomb and if the suspicion is a deterrent – that’s good enough.

Why do you trust that boy?” I would overhear them asking. His answer was always the same. “Three reasons,” he would say. “He doesn’t lie. He doesn’t say bad things about other people. And when he knocks on my door, he usually has a new idea.

The United States is the only power in history that became great by giving and not by taking. I think the crisis was when the United States had more money than ideas. Money doesn’t produce money. Ideas produce money.

The tools of his trade included faith, perseverance, resilience, and the ability to learn – to change and to grow. But his greatest tool of all, always, was hope.

Look, we have existed for 4,000 years – 2,000 years in diaspora, in exile. Nobody in the Middle East speaks their original language but Israel. When we started 64 years ago, we were 650,000 people. So, you know, we are maybe swimming a little bit against the stream, but we continue to swim.

The present Arab uprising didn’t stem from Israel. The old guard is trying to keep down the young chickens. The old guard is better organized. They may win elections, but unless they have a solution to poverty, to corruption, to oppression, they will not last. I am with the young people.

We checked carefully the international law – what does a nation do when terrorists are using civilians to defend their life, as a shelter. And they say you do not have a choice.

I have earned the title of expert, it is only on what was. There is no expert on what will be. And yet, without knowing the future, I remain a man full of hope.

We may soon find that peace is made possible not through negotiation but through innovation.