quotes

Ze’ev Jabotinsky was a great orator and a great leader. His speeches and words were legendary. Here are some of his more famous quotes:

• “Everybody is wrong and you alone are right?’ No doubt this question springs by itself to the reader’s lips and mind. It is customary to answer this with apologetic phrases to the effect that I fully respect public opinion, that I bow to it, that I was glad to make concessions.”
• “We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest. As one of the first conditions for equality we demand the right to have our own villains, exactly as other people have them. We do not have to account to anybody, we are not to sit for anybody’s examination and nobody is old enough to call on us to answer. We came before them and will leave after them. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change, nor do we want to.”
• “There is no mightier weapon than indifference, you will never conquer it.”
• “Eliminate the Diaspora, or the Diaspora will surely eliminate you.”
• “We were not created in order to teach morals and manners to our enemies.”
• “We [Zionists] all applaud, day and night, the Iron Wall.”
• “We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not.”
• “We cannot give any compensation for Palestine, neither to the Palestinians nor to other Arabs. Therefore, a voluntary agreement is inconceivable. All colonization, even the most restricted, must continue in defiance of the will of the native population. Therefore, it can continue and develop only under the shield of force which comprises an Iron Wall which the local population can never break through. This is our Arab policy. To formulate it any other way would be hypocrisy.”
• “The Jewish people – all of us, 100 percent want peace.”
• “Our habit of constantly and zealously answering to any rabble has already done us a lot of harm and will do much more. We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest. As one of the first conditions for equality we demand the right to have our own villains, exactly as other people have them. We do not have to account to anybody, we are not to sit for anybody’s examination and nobody is old enough to call on us to answer. We came before them and will leave after them. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change, nor do we want to.”
• “Hebrew is the most wonderful of languages, a language of a thousand antonyms, hard and strong as steel, while soft and gleaming as gold.”
• “Preservation of the special character of nations is essential for progress.”
• “Silence is Despicable!”
• “Tell them [the Jewish People] three things in my name, and not two: they must get iron [i.e. weapons]; they must choose a king; and they must learn to laugh.”
• “What interest can the Jewish nation have in individuals whose supreme pride consists in the fact that they have renounced their own people?”
• “The bitter root of our shame and our suffering is that we do not give our own people the full love of a patriot. It would be better if we did not love our people at all, if we were unconcerned as to whether it existed or had disappeared, rather than that we should love it halfway which means to despise it.”
• “We were not created in order to teach morals and manners to our enemies. Let them learn these things for themselves before they establish relations with us. We want to hit back at anybody who harms us. Whoever does not repay a blow by a blow is also incapable of repaying a good deed in kind. Only something who can hate his enemies can be a faithful friend to those who love him.”
• “It is always aimed at us, and we must respond. We must end this abuse of ourselves, at all costs. And it is very easy. They spit in our faces without fear, ‘in passing’, for no reason – not because our insulters are blessed with courage and want to pick a fight with us, but because this pleasure is so cheap for them: they will spit at us and go on their way, and nothing will happen.”
• “It is an incorrect view which states that government supported by the majority is democracy. The democratic concept is the result of a historical process, of struggles against governments of rule by the minority. This is not yet, however, true democracy.”
• “Men are free and equal. It is not true that man is citizen first; on the contrary, man is first of all something above a citizen – he is a king in his own right, and should not be bound by an outward duty to obligation unless absolutely necessary for his own and his neighbors’ protection.”
• “I am prepared to take an oath binding ourselves and our descendants that we shall never do anything contrary to the principle of equal rights and that we shall never try to eject anyone. This seems to me a fairly peaceful credo.”
• “I do not believe that the constitution of any state ought to include special paragraphs explicitly guaranteeing it’s “national” character. Rather, I believe that it would better for the constitution if there were fewer of those kinds of paragraphs. The best and most natural way is for the “national” character of the state to be guaranteed by the fact of its having a certain majority.”
• “How does the withdrawal of God from a people begin? Apparently it begins when that nation dares to maliciously desecrate what is sacred to others. We have learned this well and will consequently accord the greatest respect to all that is sacred.”
• “All of us, all Jews and Zionists of all schools of thought, want the best for the Arabs of Eretz Israel. We do not want to eject even one Arab from either the left or the right bank of the Jordan River. We want them to prosper both economically and culturally. We envision the regime of Jewish Palestine as follows: most of the population will be Jewish, but equal rights for all Arab citizens will not only be guaranteed, they will also be fulfilled.”
• “The first consequence of “ever man is a king” is, obviously, universal equality: the essence of your or my royalty is that there cannot be anyone above you or me in dignity or status. The second consequence is individual liberty: a king is nobody’s subject.”
• “Today, the test of democracy is freedom of the press: the most liberal constitution is a lie if the press is muzzled, but where the press is free there is a hope even despite defects of the constitution.”
• “A newspaper is a grand thing. There is no labor of higher worth than that of the journalist, whether he writes instructional articles or reports on a robbery that took place yesterday in the slums. Like the function of the blood circulating through the body, or like the function of commerce in the international market, so is the function of journalism in the realm of the spirit Who were the first to teach us to always interfere in matters that are not ours, to judge people and nations, even though we were never chosen for the position of judge? The work of the publicist is a legacy from the Prophets of Israel Our passion is to speak, to proclaim “Shouting” is what the same audience calls it, we have no need for words, give us actions.’ One thing that audience forgets is that speech is also an action – Perhaps the most authentic of all other actions. Cities have been destroyed, and more will fall, but what was shouted in the wilderness thousands of years ago is alive and still relevant. The world was created by the Word. The world will be mended by the Article.”
• “I very emphatically urge our friends to have a more serious view of such principles as freedom of conscience and freedom of thought. I, for one, am not prepared to support the mania of banning spiritual quest, so long as it does not imply blasphemy against the basic principles of liberty, equality, and nationality.”