Shimon Peres

“When I am speaking about American presidents, I have to speak about my very special relations with President Clinton. He contributed more to peace than anybody else in the American sense.”

“When I look at the record of President Obama concerning the major issue security I think it's a highly satisfactory record from Israeli point of view.”

“From my earliest youth, I have known that while one is obliged to plan with care the stages of one's journey, one is entitled to dream, and keep dreaming, of its destination. A man may feel as old as his years yet as young as his dreams.”

“My greatest mistake is that my dreams were too small.”

“Let all of us turn from bullets to ballots, from guns to shovels.”

“Early in the morning, I fell in love with the girl that later on became my wife. At that time, we were so naive. I wanted to charm her, so I read her Capital by Marx. I thought somehow she would be convinced by the strength of his criticism about capital.”

“Israel has its attractions. It's the most dramatic country in the world. Everybody's engaged. Everybody argues. When I leave Israel, I get a little bit bored, you know?”

“Israel welcomes the wind of change, and sees a window of opportunity. Democratic and science-based economies by nature desire peace. Israel does not want to be an island of affluence in an ocean of poverty. Improvements in our neighbours' lives mean improvements to the neighbourhood in which we live.”

“What you can do with relations is greater than what you can do with guns.”

“The wars we fought were forced upon us. Thanks to the Israel Defense Forces, we won them all, but we did not win the greatest victory that we aspired to: release from the need to win victories.”

“Today, the people are governing the governments. And when they begin to talk to each other, they are surprised, they can be friends. Why should we hate each other?”

“Israel was born under the British mandate. We learned from the British what democracy means, and how it behaves in a time of danger, war and terror. We thank Britain for introducing freedom and respect of human rights both in normal and demanding circumstances.”

“We proved that the aggressors do not necessarily emerge as the victors, but we learned that the victors do not necessarily win peace.”

“I knew that the most important thing a man has is in his head, and from a young age, I often studied the head structure of each person, hoping to crack his codes. I considered a high forehead a gift from God.”

“The problem of the Middle East is poverty more than politics.”

“There is a real need to construct a different Middle East. The Middle East must change because the world has changed. And instead of oppositional armies that are fighting usually one against another, now we have a net of terrorists that are trying to destroy everything. They are not two; they are hundreds.”

“And in England there has always been something deeply pro-Arab, of course, not among all Englishmen, and anti-Israeli, in the establishment. They abstained in the 1947 UN partition resolution... They maintained an arms embargo against us in the 1950s... They always worked against us. They think the Arabs are the underdogs.”

“I think I was a good student, because I jumped over a school. My main interest was basically history and literature. Sports were basically basketball and swimming at a pool. I was so happy.”

“In the Middle East, the conflict today is a matter of generations and not of cultures.”

“One of the most important branches of the Egyptian economy is tourism. No bikinis, no tourism. So they have to decide what to do.”