Moshe Quotes & Sayings

Countries and places have a history, a story, and a culture. — Moshe Safdie

When I first started comedy, me and my friends were kids. I claim - although I know that it's a spurious and probably untrue claim - that we were the first generation of kids to act black. — Moshe Kasher

I knew what I wanted to do when I set out. I knew that I wanted to write a book that told the story, obviously. I wanted it be comedy first, because I felt like there already had been childhood druggy stories that were very serious, and I felt that the unique thing here was that I was a comic and I could tell the story with some levity, and I have been laughing at these stories my whole life. — Moshe Kasher

Well I haven't seen any free elections in the Arab world. They may be coming someday, except for in Israel. In Israel, Arabs have a chance to participate in free elections. Nowhere else really. — Moshe Arens

I imagine that the intention is to get rid of them. The interests of security demand that we get rid of them. — Moshe Sharett

Find your true weakness and surrender to it. Therein lies the path to genius. Most people spend their lives using their strengths to overcome or cover up their weaknesses. Those few who use their strengths to incorporate their weaknesses, who don't divide themselves, those people are very rare. In any generation there are a few and they lead their generation. — Moshe Feldenkrais

In order to recognize small changes in effort, the effort itself must first be reduced. More delicate and improved control of movement is possible only through the increase of sensitivity, through a greater ability to sense differences. — Moshe Feldenkrais

The Old City of Jerusalem is in our hands. — Moshe Dayan

I saw clearly how those who saved the state so heroically and courageously in the War of Independence would be capable of bringing a catastrophe upon it if they are given the chance in normal times. — Moshe Sharett

Standing is harder than moving. — Moshe Feldenkrais

If I hold a twenty pound weight, I cannot detect a fly landing on it because the least detectable difference in the stimulus is half a pound. On the other hand, if i hold a feather, a fly landing on it makes a great difference. Obviously then, in order to be able to tell the differences in exertion one must first reduce the exertion. Finer and finer performance is possible only if the sensitivity, that is, the ability to feel the difference is improved. — Moshe Feldenkrais

Most important, don't do anything you don't want. — Moshe Dayan

You can't teach a monkey to speak and you can't teach an Arab to be democratic, — Moshe Feiglin

Make the impossible possible, the possible easy, the easy elegant ... — Moshe Feldenkrais

As the people of Ein Hod were marched into despossession, Moshe and his comrades guarded and looted the newly emptied village. While Dalia lay heartbroken, delirious with the loss of Ismael, Jolanta rocked David to sleep. While Hasan tended to his family's survival, Moshe sang in drunken revelry with his fellow soldiers. And while Yehya and the others moved in anguished steps away from their land, the usurpers sand "Hatikva," and shouted, "Long live Israel! — Susan Abulhawa

The greatest satisfaction, I think, is when a building opens and the public possesses it and you cut the umbilical cord and you see it taking on its own life. There's no greater satisfaction. — Moshe Safdie

Rabbi Moshe Weinberger of Mesivta Beis Shraga related how his father used to say that on Purim, the handle of the gragger (noisemaker) we spin is beneath the gragger itself, while on Chanukah the handle of the dreidel (four-sided top) we spin is on top. Purim, he expounded, represents human initiative, an "awakening from below," while Chanukah represents Divine intervention, an "awakening from above." On Purim, we stir ourselves with drink, joy, a hearty meal and other activities. On Chanukah, we light a candle that we are not allowed to use for any purpose other than to gaze at its flame. We just sit back and look. We let Hashem take over. We remind ourselves that Hashem is running the show. — Yaakov Astor

The method of collective punishment so far has proved effective. — Moshe Dayan

The Holocaust is not only a tragedy of the Jewish people, it is a failure of humanity as a whole. — Moshe Katsav

Gaza will become part of sovereign Israel and will be populated by Jews. This will also serve to ease the housing crisis in Israel — Moshe Feiglin

The Iranian regime doesn't express the wishes and values of the Iranian people. — Moshe Katsav

What you truly learn best will appear to you later as your own discovery. — Moshe Feldenkrais

Oh, my other goal was that I wanted to talk about this area and this time in history. I wanted to talk about growing up in Oakland, a white kid, from this kind of generation of broken homes and listening to hip-hop. — Moshe Kasher

Our family has lived in Iran for 2,500 years, and Iranian Jewry has the long history in that land. — Moshe Katsav

We have no solution ... You [Palestinians] shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads. — Moshe Dayan

A house is not a machine! It's something else for living - but not a machine. — Moshe Safdie

This is the contradictory desire in our utopia. We want to live in a small community with which we can identify and yet we want all the facilities of the city of millions of people. We want to have very intense urban experiences and yet we want the open space right next to us. — Moshe Safdie

Our role in Israel is a pioneering one, and we need people with certain strength of fiber. — Moshe Sharett

We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it, that governs it by the virtue of its language and savage culture. — Moshe Sharett

Once the return tide starts, it will be impossible to stem it, and it will prove our undoing. — Moshe Sharett

Every entity loses perfection as long as it is not fulfilling its purpose. — Moshe Chaim Luzzatto

Moshe Sluhovsky's fascinating study links spirit possession, exorcism, and mystical practice in early modern Europe. Women and men, healers and priestly exorcisers are caught up in a new quest for truth and introspection as they try to figure out whether these dramas of body and soul come from the devil or God. A stunning feat of scholarship and interpretation. — Natalie Zemon Davis

I think the general public's response to my projects is very strong. You can be an intellectual and say that popularity detracts from architectural quality. On the other hand, you can see in the public's identification something very positive. — Moshe Safdie

Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother. — Moshe Dayan

Richard Pryor had real sincere and vulnerable moments. Now it seems so cheesy if you stop your act and say, "This is why we have to help them kids. We've got to make sure them kids can read." — Moshe Kasher

Moshe was an Israeli with an ear-slitting laugh. He used it in the same way as a madman uses a gun, spraying it around with bewildering randomness. — Alex Garland

I am against preventive war because it means measures by the UN against us. — Moshe Sharett

There is often grief that comes with loving, Moshe. But it is worth it. — Bodie Thoene

Even of if a certain backlash is unavoidable, we must make the most of the momentous chance with which history has presented us so swiftly and so unexpectedly. — Moshe Sharett

After all, we are not children. It's time we planned our life. — Moshe Dayan

Architecture is not about building the impossible, which we can do if we have enough money and enough tools and enough computers. It is about building what is appropriate and about attaining beauty through such an approach. I describe this premise as 'inherent buildability', and I believe it is central to what I do. — Moshe Safdie

Never answer a hypothetical question. — Moshe Arens

The proposed policy [of raising the level of public service in the occupied territories] may clash with our intention to encourage emigration from both [Gaza] Strip and Judea and Samaria. Anyone who has practical ideas or proposal to encourage emigration-let him speak up. No idea or proposal is to be dismissed out of hand. — Moshe Dayan

I know that plans and reality may be two different things, but I think my demands on life are minimal. — Moshe Dayan

If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies. — Moshe Dayan

And as a stand-up comic, that's the one thing I'm a little uncomfortable with. I'm not uncomfortable with sincerity in my regular life, but, like in terms of my product that I offer, I think that it's weird, because comics used to be way more sincere in the '80s. — Moshe Kasher

Israel would not do that, both because we cannot afford to be accused by the world of aggression and because we cannot, for security and social reasons, absorb in our midst a substantial Arab population. — Moshe Sharett

The problem is that much of what we have learned is harmful to our system because it was learned in childhood, when immediate dependence on others distorted our real needs. Long-standing habitual action feels right. Training a body to be perfect in all the possible forms and configurations of its members changes not only the strength and flexibility of the skeleton and muscles, but makes a profound and beneficial change in the self-image and quality of the direction of the self. — Moshe Feldenkrais

Movement is life. Life is a process. Improve the quality of the process and you improve the quality of life itself. — Moshe Feldenkrais

The state of Israel must, from time to time, prove clearly that it is strong, and able and willing to use force, in a devastating and highly effective way. If it does not prove this, it will be swallowed up, and perhaps wiped off the face of the earth. — Moshe Sharett

It's a democracy and if I am outvoted, I have to accept the majority decisions. — Moshe Dayan

The Security Council decided to deal with Iran's nuclear intentions. The international community will not be willing to tolerate an Iran with a nuclear capability and an Iran that collaborates with terrorist organizations. — Moshe Katsav

We are producing urban places which are disjointed and disconnected and not worthy of our civilisation — Moshe Safdie

Our American friends offer us money, arms, and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice. — Moshe Dayan

We could not guard every water pipeline from being blown up and every tree from being uprooted. We could not prevent every murder of a worker in an orchard or a family in their beds. — Moshe Dayan

I am proud to be the president of the state of Israel. — Moshe Katsav

The ceremony was fast so we wouldn't be caught. When it was over, the men all whispered 'Mazel tov' and climbed back onto their shelves. I went up to the boy and pressed the wooden horse into his hands, the only present I could give him. The boy looked at me with big, round eyes. Had I ever been so young?
'We are alive,' I told him. 'We are alive, and that is all that matters. We cannot let them tear us from the pages of the world.'
I said it as much for me as for him. I said it in memory of Uncle Moshe, and my mother and father, and my aunts and other uncles and cousins. The Nazis had put me in a gas chamber. I had thought I was dead, but I was alive. I was a new man that day, just like the bar mitzvah boy. I was a new man, and I was going to survive. — Alan Gratz

Israel cannot afford to stand against the entire world and be denounced as the aggressor. — Moshe Dayan

Soldiers of Israel, we have no aims of conquest. Our purpose is to bring to naught the attempts of the Arab armies to conquer our land. — Moshe Dayan

Hip-hop was a big part of my life growing up, especially West Coast gangster rap. The reason I was able to listen to it so freely was that my mom couldn't hear any of it, so we would be driving along just blaring Too $hort's horrible misogynistic stuff, and my mom would just turn to us and say, "This is great. I can feel the bass. It sounds so nice." And we're like, "Yeah, mom. We can feel the bass, too." — Moshe Kasher

Sometimes the attempt to strenghten contact with the divine is a journey. — Moshe Idel

I want my children to be able to meet and play and communicate with many other children on their own, not only when they are driven somewhere. I want them to grow up in an environment that is not just a place where people sleep but where people work.. and where people enjoy themselves. — Moshe Safdie

We are a nation that loves the peace. We will never stop growing and developing but we know how to protect ourselves using force. — Moshe Ya'alon

What you have is have equal rights, you don't have equal obligations. Not all Arab citizens have the same obligation, namely defending the country. That's important and it needs to be corrected. Part of the integration is also taking it on themselves the burden, if you will, or the obligation to defend their country. — Moshe Arens

If I had to resign every time the Cabinet disagrees with me, I could not last as a Defense Minister one week. — Moshe Dayan

Take the American declaration of Independence. It contains no mention of territorial limits. We are not obliged to fix the limits of the State. — Moshe Dayan

Freedom is the oxygen of the soul — Moshe Dayan

Performing arts buildings are complex. The acoustics, the sight lines and all that have to just be perfect. So you begin with just making these things sublime as musical instruments. And if you fail there, you have failed it all. — Moshe Safdie

I have traveled a long road from the battlefield to the peace table. — Moshe Dayan

Our breathing reflects every emotional or physical effort and every disturbance. — Moshe Feldenkrais

Terrorism and negotiations simply don't go together. — Moshe Arens

The international community is unwilling to accept the policies of the Iranian regime. — Moshe Katsav

In order to change our mode of action, we must change the image of ourselves that we carry within us. — Moshe Feldenkrais

I am not supposed to be an expert in every field. I am supposed to be an expert in picking experts. — Moshe Dayan

It is not in our hands to prevent the murder of workers ... and families ... but it is in our hands to fix a high price for our blood, so high that the Arab community and the Arab military forces will not be willing to pay it. — Moshe Dayan

I tried to keep things light. I said: Would you believe, this thing here where your arm bends, this they call an elbow. I said: Two rabbis diverged in a yellow wood. I said: Moshe goes to the doctor. Doctor, he says, etcetera, etcetera. Many things I did not say. Example. I waited so long. Other example. And were you happy? With that nebbish that clod that numbskull schlemiel you call a husband? The truth was I'd given up waiting long ago. The moment had passed, the door between the lives we could have led and the lives we led had shut in our faces. — Nicole Krauss

Exhibit 6.2 Cost of $1,000 in Monthly Lifetime Annuity Income, Starting at Age 65 Year Male Female 2004 $157,432 $167,818 2005 $157,255 $167,817 2006 $151,700 $161,363 2007 $151,524 $160,966 2008 $147,953 $155,843 2009 $156,500 $165,502 2010 $170,116 $178,410 2011 $174,828 $182,952 2012 $187,008 $195,216 2013 $183,728 $191,571 Average $163,804 $172,746 Source: CANNEX Financial Exchanges for non-COLA-adjusted qualified annuity income with a 10-year guarantee for California. — Moshe A. Milevsky

What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived. — Moshe Dayan

The Jews have opened fire, and they are unready to begin a war. — Moshe Dayan

When I first started comedy, before I kind of gained any national prominence, I - in a weird way - went back to that. Marc Maron had me on WTF making fun of me about that when I first opened for him. I had this very kind of hip-hop bravado to me, and I realized that now I've let some of that go in my stage presence, that maybe that was because I had dropped that completely from my life, and when I got onstage I sort of rekindled it. And I think now that it was perhaps a defense mechanism that was left over from those days, which I think is kind of interesting. — Moshe Kasher

My brother and I both like sarcastic, insulting comedy, so that's a way we communicate. Somehow that's what we learned. My mom is not a really sarcastic person. She's a really sort of overly loving person, and my brother and I came out little cynical bastards. — Moshe Kasher

The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people, — Moshe Ya'alon

What is our vision on this earth - war to the end of all generations and life by the sword? — Moshe Sharett

I believe that the unity of mind and body is an objective reality. They are not just parts somehow related to each other, but an inseparable whole while functioning. A brain without a body could not think. — Moshe Feldenkrais

Movement is life; without movement life is unthinkable. — Moshe Feldenkrais

We should demand his blood not from the Arabs of Gaza but from ourselves. Let us make our reckoning today. — Moshe Dayan

There are severe limitations on civil rights. In the international arena, Iran is turning into an isolated country, and the international community is becoming more hostile toward it. — Moshe Katsav

I don't think I have a signature style that announces, 'This is a Safdie.' But I think star architects have seized an opportunity to go anywhere in the world to produce meaningless buildings. — Moshe Safdie

Beauty connotes humanity. We call a natural object beautiful because we see that its form expresses fitness, the perfect fulfillment of function. — Moshe Safdie

Moshe Dayan, who said to Sammy Davis, Jr., That's funny, to me you only look half Jewish. Never got a dinner! — Red Buttons

Israeli minister of defense Moshe Dayan - the architect of Israel's astonishing victory in the 1967 Six-Day War - also wrote an essay on the story of David and Goliath. According to Dayan, David fought Goliath not with inferior but (on the contrary) with superior weaponry; and his greatness consisted not in his being willing to go out into battle against someone far stronger than he was. But in his knowing how to exploit a weapon by which a feeble person could seize the advantage and become stronger. — Malcolm Gladwell

An there is always the question: is it really proven that retaliatory actions solve the security problem?. — Moshe Sharett

Let us not be afraid to see the hatred that consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who sit around us and wait for the moment when their hands will be able to reach our blood. — Moshe Dayan

There are multiple descriptions of the same real world situation. The only justification for language is to empower yourself. If the verbal description you create of the situation you find yourself in leads to paralysis and ineffectual behaviour, then throw those damn words away and find yourself a new set. There is always some useful description of the world that empowers and gives you choices and your task, if you are going to use words at all, is to find that set of words. — Moshe Feldenkrais

Moshe Dayan, who donated his eye to CBS. Never got a dinner! — Red Buttons

I got a naughty thrill out of listening to music that was that dirty, especially being that young and able to listen to it around my parents. Kids would come over to my house to listen to Too $hort records. — Moshe Kasher

There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies, not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbours here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy. — Moshe Katsav

I believe that the person who never avowed his unavowed dreams somewhere in his unconscious, in his dreams, feels he has wasted his life, and when he is old he will realize it. — Moshe Feldenkrais

A reprisal of this magnitude ... has never been carried out before. I paced back and forth in my room perplexed and completely depressed, feeling helpless. — Moshe Sharett

A painter, a sculptor, a writer, they can express freely. They don't affect society as a whole. We build buildings that have a purpose, that stay there for hundreds of years or decades. — Moshe Safdie