Quotes from Shimon Peres

The Jews' greatest contribution to history is dissatisfaction! We're a nation born to be discontented. Whatever exists we believe can be changed for the better.

They thought that I was a man with reasonable judgment, so I was never under pressure from my parents; I could do whatever I wanted. I never had a negative word from them, nothing whatsoever.

The United States is the only power in history that became great by giving and not by taking. I think the crisis was when the United States had more money than ideas. Money doesn't produce money. Ideas produce money.

[Hamas] thought that if you go to elections you become a democrat for the rest of your life. They think that democracy is limited to one day in four years.

I worked with a group of people who argued day and night - professors, officials, the Minister of Finance - but there were decisions that I had to make.

Look, I worked with American Republican presidents and Democratic presidents, all of them, and each of them has shown a deep and profound friendship to Israel, you know? I can't remember anybody who was in that sense negative as far as Israel is concerned.

I thought all my life that optimists and pessimists pass away the same way, so why be a pessimist?

Look, Israel doesn't intend to introduce nuclear weapons, but if people are afraid that we have them, why not? It's a deterrent.

We have to stand together against terror and the reasons for terrorism, which are poverty and ignorance.

There is a real need to construct a different Middle East. The Middle East must change because the world has changed. And instead of oppositional armies that are fighting usually one against another, now we have a net of terrorists that are trying to destroy everything. They are not two; they are hundreds.

We checked carefully the international law - what does a nation do when terrorists are using civilians to defend their life, as a shelter. And they say you do not have a choice.

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

Peace with the Palestinians will open ports of peace all around the Mediterranean. The duty of leaders is to pursue freedom ceaselessly, even in the face of hostility, in the face of doubt and disappointment. Just imagine what could be.

Science doesn't have flags. Science doesn't have borders.

Israel welcomes the wind of change, and sees a window of opportunity. Democratic and science-based economies by nature desire peace. Israel does not want to be an island of affluence in an ocean of poverty. Improvements in our neighbours' lives mean improvements to the neighbourhood in which we live.

Israel was born under the British mandate. We learned from the British what democracy means, and how it behaves in a time of danger, war and terror. We thank Britain for introducing freedom and respect of human rights both in normal and demanding circumstances.

What should be the future of Israel? Is the land the most important choice, and for that reason to keep the whole of the land at any cost, or to have a partition and build the Jewish state on part of the land? And the other part?

Poverty and ignorance, which beget terror, are not eradicated by firing artillery shells. Borders do not stop rockets, and barbed wire does not prevent terror.

If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact - not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.

That was my first lesson from Ben-Gurion. Then I saw him making peace, and I saw him making war. He mobilized me before the war. The man was a very rare combination between a real intellectual and a born leader. There is a contradiction between the two.

David Ben-Gurion was a mythic figure, the founding father of Israel and a modern-day prophet, but he was also a real man who stormed through history on human legs. It was my great privilege to know him and work with him for many years.

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

A politician and a government should be judged by one way only: on the record of what you do or did, not on what you say.

For 60 years, I was the most controversial figure in the country, and suddenly, I'm the most popular man in the land. Truth be told, I don't know when I was happier: then or now.