David Ben-Gurion

Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles is not a realist.

Without moral and intellectual independence, there is no anchor for national independence.

In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.

Courage is a special kind of knowledge: the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared.

If an expert says it can't be done, get another expert.

Suffering makes a people greater, and we have suffered much. We had a message to give the world, but we were overwhelmed, and the message was cut off in the middle. In time there will be millions of us - becoming stronger and stronger - and we will complete the message.

Ours is a country built more on people than on territory. The Jews will come from everywhere: from France, from Russia, from America, from Yemen... Their faith is their passport.

Israel has created a new image of the Jew in the world - the image of a working and an intellectual people, of a people that can fight with heroism.

Courage is... the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared.

There are eleven million Jews in the world. I don't say that all of them will come here, but I expect several million, and with natural increase I can quite imagine a Jewish state of ten million.

Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.

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

Thought is a strenuous art - few practice it, and then only at rare times.