Shimon Peres Quotes

We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go.

I think all the history of the Jewish people is about adaptation.

Israelis are the total Jews.

I am a Jew, and I'm convinced that Israel is the homeland.

I respect Israel as hugely special, especially given all the sensitivities around it. The Jews managed to build a country, to elevate it, without anything except people and brains.

Four years ago in speaking of a Jewish nation one ran the risk of being regarded ridiculous. Today he makes himself ridiculous who denies the existence of a Jewish nation.

Extol Jewish virtue, modern Zionism and the Israeli Defense Forces.

I have no fear that the candle lighted in Palestine years ago will ever be put out.

The laws of Solon, of Numa of Lycurgus are dead while the even older laws of Moses still live. Athens, Sparta, Rome have perished and have left no children on earth. Zion, while destroyed did not lose its children;;; They no longer have leaders and yet they are a people, they no longer have a country and yet they are citizens.

Shall They Return to Jerusalem Again?

My thinking is dominated by the future of Israel and the Jewish people wherever they are—in 30 years or 300 years.

I feel that the Jews have always had a special connection to this part of the world, which in geographical terms was called Palestine for so many centuries.

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.

Israel was not created in order to disappear - Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.

I often hear them accuse Israel of Judaizing Jerusalem. That's like accusing America of Americanizing Washington, or the British of Anglicizing London. You know why we're called 'Jews'? Because we come from Judea.

At the age of nineteen and a half, I went to the Land of Israel to till its soil and live by the labour of my hands. As I did not find work, I sought my livelihood elsewhere.

A challenge to the right of Israel to exist can be construed as a challenge to the existence of the Jewish people only if one believes that Israel alone keeps the Jewish people alive or that all Jews invest their sense of perpetuity in the state of Israel in its current or traditional forms.

If anyone thinks that Jews can steal into the land of their fathers, he is deceiving either himself or others. Nowhere is the coming of Jews so promptly noted as in the historic home of the Jews, for the very reason that it is the historic home.

The Arab world needs to appreciate that legitimate historical claims and modern necessities are what make Israel the homeland of the Jewish people.

Jewish people are tough people. They believe in something and believe it really strong, and I find it fascinating that a small country like Israel is as powerful as it is.

A Jew without Jews, without Judaism, without Zionism, without Jewishness, without a temple or an army or even a pistol, a Jew clearly without a home, just the object itself, like a glass or an apple.

I feel that I am completely in solidarity with Jews in the world, because I know what it is to be a Jew. I've seen what it is; I am myself of Jewish origin, and therefore I can only be fully in support of the idea that the Jews, after all they've suffered, need a country where they are at home.

If I have to advise our brothers in France, I'll tell them one thing - move to Israel, as early as possible. I say that to Jews all around the world, but there I think it's a must and they have to move immediately.

It's clear to me that one can't be Jewish without Israel. Religious or non-religious, Zionist or non-Zionist, Ashkenazi or Sephardic - all these will not exist without Israel.

Israel was not created in order to disappear.