263 Quotes by Shimon Peres

People prefer remembering to imagining. Memory deals with familiar things; imagination deals with the unknown. Imagination can be frightening – it requires risking a departure from the familiar.

As Ben-Gurion so often said, the moral high ground is also the basis of power.

The choice the pioneers faced was stark: succeed or starve.

If we give in to the hijackers’ demands and release terrorists,” I said during one of the heated government meetings over the coming week, “everyone will understand us, but no one will respect us.” Yet the opposite – however grim the results – held: “If, on the other hand, we conduct a military operation to free hostages, it is possible that no one will understand us – but everyone will respect us.

Let all of us turn from bullets to ballots, from guns to shovels.

I learned that public service is a privilege that must be based on moral foundations.

If you have children, you cannot feed them forever with flags for breakfast and cartridges for lunch. You need something more substantial. Unless you educate your children and spend less money on conflicts, unless you develop your science, technology and industry, you don't have a future.

I felt that if I could make the world better for the young, that would be the greatest thing we can do.

What you can do with relations is greater than what you can do with guns.