Golda Meir was an Israeli teacher, kibbutznik, stateswoman, politician, and the fourth Prime Minister of Israel. Born in Kiev, she emigrated to the United States as a child with her family in 1906 and was educated there, becoming a teacher. These Golda Meir quotes will motivate you.
Best Golda Meir Quotes
- “One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.” ~ Golda Meir
- “We can forgive [the Arabs] for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with [the Arabs] when they love their children more than they hate us…” ~ Golda Meir
- “Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” ~ Golda Meir
- “Once in a Cabinet, we had to deal with the fact that there had been an outbreak of assaults on women at night. One minister suggested a curfew; women should stay home after dark. I said, ‘But it’s the men who are attacking the women. If there’s to be a curfew, let the men stay home, not the women.” ~ Golda Meir
- “Don’t be humble… you’re not that great.” ~ Golda Meir
- “If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have the bad image.” ~ Golda Meir
- “By the way, did you ever realize that if Moses would have turned right instead of left, we’d have had the oil, the Arabs would have had the sand?” ~ Golda Meir
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“Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life.” ~ Golda Meir
- “The world hates a Jew who hits back. The world loves us only when we are to be pitied.” ~ Golda Meir
- “The only way to eliminate war is to love our children more than we hate our enemies.” ~ Golda Meir
- “It isn’t enough to believe in something; you have to have the stamina to meet obstacles and overcome them, to struggle.” ~ Golda Meir
- “It isn’t really important to decide when you are very young just exactly what you want to become when you grow up. It is much more important to decide on the way you want to live. If you are going to be honest with yourself and honest with your friends, if you are going to get involved in causes which are good for others, not only for yourselves, then it seems to me that that is sufficient, and maybe what you will be is only a matter of chance.” ~ Golda Meir
- “Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!” ~ Golda Meir
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“You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.” ~ Golda Meir
- “We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go.” ~ Golda Meir
- “Not being beautiful was the true blessing. Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome.” ~ Golda Meir
- “A leader who doesn’t hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.” ~ Golda Meir
- “There will be peace in the Middle East only when the Arabs love their children more than they hate Israel.” ~ Golda Meir
- “My dear, old age is like an airplane flying in a storm. Once you’re in it there’s nothing you can do. You can’t stop a plane, you can’t stop a storm, you can’t stop time. So you might as well take it easy, with wisdom.” ~ Golda Meir
- “A story once went the rounds of Israel to the effect that Ben-Gurion described me as ‘the only man’ in his cabinet. What amused me about is that he (or whoever invented the story) thought that this was the greatest compliment that could be paid to a woman. I very much doubt that any man would have been flattered if I had said about him that he was the only woman in the government!” ~ Golda Meir
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“Don’t become cynical. Don’t give up hope. Don’t believe that everything is judged only by expediency. There is idealism in this world. There is human brotherhood.” ~ Golda Meir
- “Above all, this country is our own. Nobody has to get up in the morning and worry what his neighbors think of him. Being a Jew is no problem here.” ~ Golda Meir
- “Those that perished in Hitler’s gas chambers were the last Jews to die without standing up to defend themselves.” ~ Golda Meir
- “Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart, don’t know how to laugh either.” ~ Golda Meir
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“Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.” ~ Golda Meir
- “We don’t thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient.” ~ Golda Meir
- “We only want that which is given naturally to all peoples of the world, to be masters of our own fate, not of others, and in cooperation and friendship with others.” ~ Golda Meir Quotes
- “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 for more than 2,000 years, with all the pain and torment that has been inflicted upon it.” ~ Golda Meir
- “One of the first sights that shocked me, when I came to Israel in 1921, was an Arab turning over a field with a very primitive plow; pulling the plow were an ox and a woman. Now, if it means that we have destroyed this romantic picture by bringing in tractors, combines, and threshing machines, this is true: we have.” ~ Golda Meir
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“Israel itself is the strongest guarantee against another Holocaust.” ~ Golda Meir
- “There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.” ~ Golda Meir
- “You can’t improve on saying nothing.” ~ Golda Meir
- “It is always much easier, I have discovered, to make people cry or gasp than to make them think.” ~ Golda Meir
- “America is a great country. It has many shortcomings, many social inequalities, and it’s tragic that the problem of the blacks wasn’t solved fifty or even a hundred years ago, but it’s still a great country, a country full of opportunities, of freedom! Does it seem nothing to you to be able to say what you like, even against the government, the Establishment?” ~ Golda Meir
- “The only alternative to war is peace and the only road to peace is negotiations.” ~ Golda Meir
