Quotes from Shimon Peres

It was not me that changed; it was the situation that changed.

Ben-Gurion once said that in Israel, "in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles." After such extraordinary achievement in science and technology and human creativity, how could we be anything but believers in miracles, faithful to the imaginations that are capable of conceiving them, and committed to the efforts to bring them to life? Ben-Gurion was right: realism in Israel is nothing less than the impossible made real.

Making peace is not a simple endeavor. It is a constant struggle. But its complexity should not overshadow its purpose.

My only regret is not having dreamed more. I got my life as a gift. I'll give it up without an overdraft.

We may soon find that peace is made possible not through negotiation but through innovation.

without emboldening people to envisage the unlikely, we increase risk rather than diminish it.

How did this happen? How did we start up a nation from nothing and transform it into a nation of start-ups? The answer lies in a paradox: having nothing was at once our greatest challenge and our greatest blessing of all. Without natural resources, our hopes were tied to our own creativity.

The choice the pioneers faced was stark: succeed or starve.

the decision to move forward—despite the sheer improbability of success—was not an elective one; it was a matter of necessity.

Israel was born so Jews could finally cultivate their land with their own hands. But the most important thing to remember is that we depended more upon our brain than our muscle. We learned that the treasures hidden in ourselves are far greater than anything that can be found in the ground.

tell them that both optimists and pessimists die in the end, but the optimist leads a hopeful and happy existence while the pessimist spends his days cynical and downtrodden. It is too high a price to pay. Besides, optimism is a prerequisite of progress. It provides the inspiration we need, especially in hard times.

I have earned the title of expert, it is only on what was. There is no expert on what will be. And yet, without knowing the future, I remain a man full of hope.

I was given my life, some two and a half billion seconds: I did some reckoning, and I decided to do something with those seconds so that I might make a difference.

Whoever of you love life and desire to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies. Seek peace and pursue it.

When Israel was weak, I worked to make her fierce. But once she was strong, I gave my life's efforts to peace.

The tools of his trade included faith, perseverance, resilience, and the ability to learn—to change and to grow. But his greatest tool of all, always, was hope.

If we give in to the hijackers' demands and release terrorists," I said during one of the heated government meetings over the coming week, "everyone will understand us, but no one will respect us." Yet the opposite—however grim the results—held: "If, on the other hand, we conduct a military operation to free hostages, it is possible that no one will understand us—but everyone will respect us.

We spoke often of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, who argued that the future of the Jewish people depended on the existence of a Jewish state, one bonded together not just by religion but by language and nationality. "Let them give us sovereignty over a piece of the earth's surface, just sufficient for the needs of our people. Then we will do the rest.

It is the leap from the age of territory to the age of science.

Given the thin line between success and failure, knowing that what works in one circumstance might be disastrous in another, what do such operations have to teach us? It's certainly not that daring military action is or isn't the better course; it's that daring thinking about one's options is always the better course.

From the darkness of my hiding place, I would ask God to forgive the transgressors and have mercy on every man, as he himself had sown the seeds of weakness.

People prefer remembering to imagining. Memory deals with familiar things; imagination deals with the unknown. Imagination can be frightening—it requires risking a departure from the familiar.

During my career, I would encounter numerous situations in which parties found themselves full of mistrust and anger, where it seemed that all doors had been closed. Ben-Gurion had shown me that listening is not just a key element of good leadership, it is the key, the means to unlock doors that have been slammed shut by bitter dispute and resignation.

Peace is a purpose—a goal worthy of the chase, while war is a function—born out of reluctant necessity.