David Ben-Gurion Quotes - Page 3

We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do return

The old will die and the young will forget.

The past is our very being.

We offer peace and neighborliness to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Hebrew nation for the common good of all.

The law is whatever people determine it to be.

To be realistic, you have to believe in miracles.

In the midst of wanton aggression, we still call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to return to the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, with full and equal citizenship and due representation in its bodies and institutions - provisional or permanent.

We do not recognize the right of the Palestinian Arabs to rule the country, since Palestine is still undeveloped and awaits its builders.

The great Jewish scientists and philosophers of the last few generations - Spinoza, Einstein, Freud, Robert Oppenheimer and others - were natives of Europe and America.

Under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellahs or worked by them. Only if a fellah leaves his place of settlement, should we offer to buy his land, at an appropriate price.

We don't consider manual work as a curse, or a bitter necessity, not even as a means of making a living. We consider it as a high human function, as the basis of human life, the most dignified thing in the life of the human being, and which ought to be free, creative. Men ought to be proud of it.

In the land of Israel was born the Jewish nation. There came an order to kill the religious and social spirit of the people. . . . And after the nation turned back to its land with strength, it protected it steadfastly. . . .

The assets of the Jewish National Home must be created exclusively through our own work, for only the product of the Hebrew labor can serve as the national estate.

Not the absorption capacity of the land, but the creative ability of a people, is the true yardstick with which we can measure the immigration potentialities of the land.

You must talk to us as equals, or not talk to us at all.

We will make a great and awful mistake if we fail to settle Hebron, neighbor and predecessor of Jerusalem, with a large Jewish settlement, constantly growing and expanding, very soon. This will also be a blessing to the Arab neighbors. Hebron is worthy to be Jerusalem's sister.

Those who today murdered our people in an ambush not only plotted to murder some Jews but intended to provoke us... The Arabs stand to gain from such a development. They want the country to be in a state of perpetual pogrom.... Any further bloodshed [by the Jews] will only bring political advantage to the Arabs and harm us... Our strength is in the defense... and this strength will give us political victory if England and the world will know that we are defending ourselves rather than attacking.

It is only in Hebrew that you feel the full meaning of it -- all the associations which a different word has.

We must assist the British in the war as if there were no White Paper and we must resist the White Paper as if there were no war.

After eighty, there are no enemies, only survivors.