Zionism and pessimism are not compatible.
I don't want to have a bad influence on anybody, but there's no point in my giving up cigarettes now. I won't die young.
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!
If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we'd rather be alive and have the bad image.
We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown and when strawberries bloom in Israel.
One of the first sights that shocked me, when I came to Israel in 1921, was an Arab turning over a field with a very primitive plow; pulling the plow were an ox and a woman. Now, if it means that we have destroyed this romantic picture by bringing in tractors, combines, and threshing machines, this is true: we have.