Golda Meir

I must tell you that I was never a beautiful woman. But I am a very good cook.

I don't mind if I'm called the 'Iron Lady' of Israel. I'm not afraid of the word 'Iron.'

We don’t want wars even when we win them.

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!

To be or not to be is not a question of philosophy, but a question of life and death.

Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.

I am not a dove. I am a Jew.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never afford.

We don’t rejoice in the death of our enemies. We are sad that we have to kill them.

One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.

We have always said that in our war with the Arabs we had a secret weapon — no alternative.

I never did anything alone. Whatever I did, I did with the people.

The world has been in an uproar for a week now, because a woman got into top office. I don’t understand it. What’s so terrible?

I come from a generation where you don’t think of yourself as separate from the Jewish people. You are part of the Jewish people.

It is not the business of government to make people happy. It is the business of government to make people secure.

I still believe in miracles, but I've learned to depend on them less.

If we have to choose between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have the bad image.

Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.

We have concluded a peace treaty with Egypt. We have not concluded a peace treaty with the Arab world. And there is a difference.

I never would have believed in 1948 that I would live to see a woman prime minister of Israel.