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" 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. "

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" What should be the future of Israel? Is the land the most important choice, and for that reason to keep the whole of the land at any cost, or to have a partition and build the Jewish state on part of the land? And the other part? "

Shimon Peres

Future

Important

Land

" If you have children, you cannot feed them forever with flags for breakfast and cartridges for lunch. You need something more substantial. Unless you educate your children and spend less money on conflicts, unless you develop your science, technology and industry, you don't have a future. "

" There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary. "

Shimon Peres

Who

Saying

" 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? "

" There was one occasion when I was very young - eight years or seven years old - that Jewish businessmen went through the forest, and they were assassinated. And that was for the first time I saw in our paper where there were assassinations in our place. "

" When I was a child, Israel was a legend more than a reality. She emerged from a dream, and today she has surpassed that dream. "

" I have one weakness. I don't like vacations. I like to work. "

Shimon Peres

Vacations

Weakness

" 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. "

" I believe that peace with the Palestinians is most urgent - urgent than ever before. It is necessary. It is crucial. It is possible. A delay may worsen its chances. Israel and the Palestinians are, in my judgment, ripe today to restart the peace process. "

" 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. "

" The Middle East is ailing. The malady stems from pervasive violence, shortages of food, water and educational opportunities, discrimination against women and - the most virulent cause of all - the absence of freedom. "

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

" 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. "

" He taught me literature, and he actually taught me how to read. He was my personal mentor. "

Shimon Peres

Personal

Literature

" 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. "

Shimon Peres

Think

Against

" I joined the army as a private. I was offered a rank at that time, but I refused. I preferred to remain a private. First of all, I wasn't taken by ranks, and before I knew it, they put me in the most sensitive positions anyway. "

Shimon Peres

First

Sensitive

" What is wrong with the Iranians in addition to the nuclear bomb? This is the only country on Earth in the 21st century that has renewed imperialistic ambitions. They really want to become the hegemon of the Middle East in an age that gave up imperialism. "

" Look, we have existed for 4,000 years - 2,000 years in diaspora, in exile. Nobody in the Middle East speaks their original language but Israel. When we started 64 years ago, we were 650,000 people. So, you know, we are maybe swimming a little bit against the stream, but we continue to swim. "

" Now, I learned soon enough, that among the three, two don't trust the third one - the third one is the government. Both industry and unions feel the government is a talking organization and a spending organization. "

" The Iranian regime suppresses its own people as well as others in the region. It prevents peace by sponsoring terror globally. With the ultimate weapon that it is deceptively developing, the regime aims to gain hegemony over the entire Middle East and hold the world's economy hostage. "

" That was my first lesson from Ben-Gurion. Then I saw him making peace, and I saw him making war. He mobilized me before the war. The man was a very rare combination between a real intellectual and a born leader. There is a contradiction between the two. "

Shimon Peres

Peace

War

" The internet, Facebook and Twitter have created mass communications and social spaces that regimes cannot control. "

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

" In order to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear country you have to introduce a system of verification and inspection. "

" The signing of the Israel-PLO accord is more than a political milestone. It is a transformative event which touches every Jewish family - physically, emotionally, spiritually. "

Shimon Peres

Political

Jewish

" You know who is against democracy in the Middle East? The husbands. They got used to their way of life. Now, the traditional way of life must change. Everybody must change. If you don't give equal rights to women, you can't progress. "

" When you have two alternatives, the first thing you have to do is to look for the third that you didn't think about, that doesn't exist. "

" For me, dreaming is simply being pragmatic. "

Shimon Peres

Pragmatic

Simply

" Israel's doors are open to collaboration with Bulgaria. "

" 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. "