Abba Eban
Abba Eban
Abba Ebanwas an Israeli diplomat and politician, and a scholar of the Arabic and Hebrew languages...
NationalityIsraeli
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth2 February 1915
CountryIsrael
horse research cows
Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don’t worship it. Feed it. [Addressing a group of prospective contributors to an Israeli scientific research program]
land names people
Zionism is nothing more, but also nothing less, than the Jewish People's sense of origin and destination in the Land linked eternally with its name. It is also the instrument whereby the Jewish Nation seeks an authentic fulfillment of itself.
differences tragedy has-beens
Tragedy is the difference between what is and what could have been.
ambition men evil
It [idolatry] nourishes mans ambition to domineer over his fellow man. Idolatry, therefore, is the source of all social and moral evil in the world.
embodiment might minorities
The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be.
writing justice nations
A nation writes its history in the image of its ideal.
men waiting initiative
Salvation, the prophets tell us, is preconditioned by repentance. The redeeming act of God waits upon man's initiative.
war unconditional-love thinking
I think that this is the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender.
alternatives exhausted humans
Human beings act intelligently only after they have exhausted the alternatives
Better to be disliked than pitied.
ignorance sarcasm
His ignorance is encyclopedic.
ears movement elegance
A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement.
men missing suffering
Tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.
war doubt cairo
Our intention to regard the closing of the Straits as a casus belli was communicated...to the foreign ministers of those states which had supported international navigation in the Straits in 1957 and thereafter. There can be no doubt that these warnings reached Cairo. One thing was now clear. If Nasser imposed a blockade, the explosion would ensue not from 'miscalculation', but from an open-eyed and conscious readiness for war.