Quotes from Ehud Barak

Israel's secret services are allowed to profile.

I'm not a tycoon or anything like that. Does my property amount to several million dollars? Of course it does.

Try to think for your own why the Russians and the Chinese do not like the idea that whoever takes aggressive steps to keep order within his sovereign borders should not accept others to intervene physically.

If you establish a right unity government, you create an effective platform to make... decisions because you have wider support of your own party.

As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel, it is going to be either non-Jewish or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.

There is a need to accept a limited disruption of civil liberties in order to penetrate terror.

Either we destroy world terror or world terror will destroy us.

If I were a Palestinian of the right age, I'd eventually join one of the terrorist organizations.

ISIS has never fought a real battle.

I'm not afraid of elections. I've won every election I've fought in.

I delivered lectures, and I was also a consultant for international companies in finance, both private equity and big venture capital funds.

I tend not to believe radical Muslim movements.

Israel is the strongest nation in the Middle East, but we have to apply our strength wisely.

They say in the Middle East a pessimist is simply an optimist with experience.

I have acquired - some would say deservedly - quite a few rivals: former Israeli politicians, some of whom at their height were stars beloved by large parts of the public. But today, they aren't in politics, and when they sit alone in their room, they say to themselves that Barak is the one who showed them out the door.

There is a thin line between peace of the brave and peace of the hostage... between compromise - even calculated risk - and irresponsibility and capitulation.

In Israel, there is a peace camp that can convene 200,000 people in central square of this city, on very short notice, and there is a major movement among academics, politicians, thinkers, and public leaders for peace, even at a painful price. On the Palestinian side, you can find them individually here and there, but there is no public movement.

The Middle East is a region where predictions go to die.

I don't think that the Iranians, even if they got the bomb, they're going to drop it immediately on some neighbor. They fully understand what might follow. They're radical, but not total mishuginas.

I want to study, to write to live and have a good time.

Ladies and gentlemen, the relevant question is not when Iran will get the bomb. The relevant question is at what stage can we no longer stop Iran from getting the bomb.

I know that I am absolutely reliable. Absolutely.

History never repeats itself in the same way.

Leadership can change its mind; leadership can open its eye. Leadership can even be replaced.