Shimon Peres

Optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently. I prefer to live as an optimist.

Shimon Peres (2 August 1923 - 28 September 2016) was a Polish-born Israeli statesman. He was the ninth President of Israel from 2007 to 2014. Peres served twice as the Prime Minister of Israel and twice as Interim Prime Minister, and he was a member of 12 cabinets in a political career spanning over 66 years. Peres was elected to the Knesset in November 1959 and, except for a three-month-long hiatus in early 2006, served continuously until 2007, when he became President.

Quotes

• Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
  • Quoted in The Financial Times (31 January 1995)

• If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact, not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.
  • As quoted by Donald Rumsfeld in "Sharon's Victory", The Wall Street Journal (7 February 2001)

• Until the Yom Kippur War, in 1973, until then Israel didn't have a chance but to fight for her life. We were attacked five times, outgunned, outnumbered, on a small piece of land, and our main challenge was to remain alive.
  • Speech at Harvard University (20 October 2004)

• Optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently. I prefer to live as an optimist.
  • As quoted in "Serving '60 Years to Life'", Newsweek Europe (12 December 2005)

• The president of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map.
  • Remarks 8 May 2006, as quoted in "Iran can also be wiped off the map", in The Jerusalem Post (9 May 2006)

• If world is suspicious that Israel may detonate nuclear bomb and if the suspicion is a deterrent — that's good enough.
  • As quoted in "Peres: Suspicion over Israeli nukes is good deterrent", Ynetnews (1 September 2007)

• I will confine myself to reaffirming the Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons to the region.
  • As quoted in "Shimon Peres: 'Sanctions on Iran could work'", in Le Figaro (26 July 2007)

• Your majesty, the king of Saudi Arabia, I was listening to your message. I wish that your voice will become the prevailing voice of the whole region, of all people. It's right, it's needed, it's promising … The initiative's portrayal of our region's future provides hope to the people and inspires confidence in the nations.
  • On King Abdullah's Interfaith initiative, as quoted in "Saudi king promotes tolerance at U.N. forum", Reuters (12 November 2008)

• India represents the new world in a unique sense. Traditionally democracies were trying to bring equality to all walks of life, today there is a change. Democracy wants to enable every country to have the equal right to be different; it's a collection of differences, not an attempt to force or impose equality on every country. I think India is the greatest show of how so many differences in language, in sects can coexist facing great suffering and keeping full freedom.
  • "Israeli President Shimon Peres praises India as greatest 'show of co-existence'", The Economic Times (4 December 2012)

• The way to make peace is not through governments. It is through people.
  • Quoted by Joan Ryan, Hansard, vol. 619, "Promotion of Israeli-Palestinian Peace (United Kingdom Participation)", debated on 18 January 2017

Quotes about Peres

• He is sinister and slippery, always the man in a hurry.
  • Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, describing Peres to President Gerald Ford, President Ford–Harold Wilson–James Callaghan memcon (May 30, 1975)

• I think he is doing very well indeed. But I am not at all surprised. I have known him for years. Apart from all else, he is a sensitive, genuinely thoughtful, widely-read person. Moreover, he maintains an ongoing dialogue with the intellectual community. Now that is real change from, say, Menachem Begin—not to mention Golda Meir!
  • Shulamith Hareven, interviewed by Shulamith Hareven in 1985; We Are All Close: Conversations with Israeli Writers (1989)

• Not long ago, at a meeting of people involved with social policy, Mr. Shimon Peres said that there are two things in the world that have no lobby: the weak and the future. I would recommend that we all adopt this diagnosis. We have too big a lobby for the past and not a big enough one for the future.
  • Shulamith Hareven, "Identity: Victim" in The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)