Golda Meir

"To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be."

"I thought that a Jewish state would be free of the evils afflicting other societies: theft, murder, prostitution... But now we have them all. And that’s a thing that cuts to the heart ..."

"We owe a responsibility not only to those who are in Israel but also to those generations that are no more, to those millions who have died within our lifetime, to Jews all over the world, and to gene…"

"It is not only a matter, I believe, of religious observance and practice. To me, being Jewish means and has always meant being proud to be part of a people that has maintained its distinct identity fo…"

"One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present."

"I am also grateful that I live in a country whose people have learned how to go on living in a sea of hatred without hating those who want to destroy them and without abandoning their own vision of pe…"

"I don’t know why you use a fancy French word like détente when there’s a good English phrase for it — cold war."

"I'm a slave to this leaf in a diary that lists what I must do, what I must say, every half hour."