Chaim Weizmann Quotes

• We will establish ourselves in Palestine whether you like it or not...You can hasten our arrival or you can equally retard it. It is however better for you to help us so as to avoid our constructive powers being turned into a destructive power which will overthrow the world.

  Chaim Weizmann

  World, Helping, You Like It

  Judische Rundschau, No. 4, 1920.

  72 Copy quote

• Independence is never given to a people, it has to be earned; and, once earned, must be defended.

  Chaim Weizmann

  Independent, People, Political

  84 Copy quote

• Miracles sometimes occur, but one has to work terribly hard for them.

  Chaim Weizmann

  Miracle, Sometimes, Hard

  63 Copy quote

• The hopes of Europe's six million Jews are centered on emigration. I was asked, 'Can you bring six million Jews to Palestine?' I replied, 'No'....From the depths of the tragedy I want to save two million young people...The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They were dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel world...Only the branch of the young shall survive...They have to accept it.

  Chaim Weizmann

  Fate, Dust, Europe

  67 Copy quote

• There must not be one law for the Jew and another for the Arabs....In saying this, I do not assume that there are tendencies toward inequalirty or discrimination. It is merely a timely warning which is particularly necessary because we shall have a very large Arab minority. I am certain that the world will judge the Jewish State by what it will do with the Arabs, just as the Jewish people at large will be judged by what we do or fail to do in this state where we have been given such a wonderful opportunity after thousands of years of wandering and suffering.

  Chaim Weizmann

  Opportunity, Israel, Years

  63 Copy quote

• There are no English, French, German or American Jews, but only Jews > > >living in England, France, Germany or America.

  Chaim Weizmann

  America, Germany, France

  52 Copy quote

• Palestine must be built up without violating the legitimate interests of the Arabs.. Palestine is not Rhodesia... 600,0000 Arabs live there, who before the sense of justice of the world have exactly the same rights to their homes as we have to our National Home.

  Chaim Weizmann

  Home, Rights, Israel

  51 Copy quote

• Now in the light of past and present events the bitter truth must be spoken. We feared too little and we hoped too much. We underestimated the bestiality of the enemy; we overestimtaed the humanity, the wisdom, the sense of justice of our friends.

  Chaim Weizmann

  Past, Light, Justice

  43 Copy quote

• The poor ignorant fellah [Arabic for peasant] does not worry about politics, but when he is told repeatedly by people in whom he has confidence that his livelihood is in danger of being taken away from him by us, he becomes our mortal enemy. . . The Arab is primitive and believes what he is told.

  Chaim Weizmann

  Believe, Taken, People

  36 Copy quote

• Each country can absorb only a limited number of Jews, if she doesn't want disorders in her stomach. Germany already has too many Jews

  Chaim Weizmann

  Country, Numbers, Germany

  32 Copy quote

• We are one people despite the ostensible rifts, cracks, and differences between the American and Soviet democracies. We are one people and it is not in our interests that the West should liberate the East, for in doing this and in liberating the enslaved nations, the West would inevitably deprive Jewry of the Eastern half of its world power.

  Chaim Weizmann

  Differences, People, Democracy

  34 Copy quote

• Miracles do happen, but you have to work hard at them.

  Chaim Weizmann

  Hard Work, Miracle, Happens

  Chaim Weizmann (1983). “The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann: series B”, p.438, Transaction Publishers

  35 Copy quote

• I head a nation of a million presidents.

  Chaim Weizmann

  President, Management, Nations

  26 Copy quote

• Einstein explained his theory to me every day, and on my arrival I was fully convinced that he understood it.

  Chaim Weizmann

  Theory, Understood, Arrivals

  Attributed to Chaim Weizmann, after a long trans-Atlantic journey; "Simpson's Contemporary Quotations" credits Nigel Calder, "Einstein's Universe", 1979.

  37 Copy quote

• He received me not only cordially, but he was also full of confidence with respect to the war. His first words, after he had welcomed me, were as follows: 'Well, Dr. Weismann, we have as good as beaten them already.' I...thanked him for his constant support for the Zionist course. 'You were standing at the cradle of this enterprise.' I said to him, 'and hopefully you will live to see that we have succeeded.' Adding that after the war we would build up a state of three to four million Jews in Palestine, whereupon he replied: 'Yes, go ahead, I am full in agreement with this idea.'

  Chaim Weizmann

  War, Agreement, Ideas

  30 Copy quote

• Lenin had taken part in Jewish student meetings in Switzerland thirty-five years before.

  Chaim Weizmann

  Taken, Years, Switzerland

  21 Copy quote

• A law is something which must have a moral basis, so that there is an inner compelling force for every citizen to obey.

  Chaim Weizmann

  Law, Citizens, Moral

  20 Copy quote

• On one side, the forces of destruction, the forces of the desert, have risen, and on the other hand stand firm the forces of civilization, but we will not be stopped.

  Chaim Weizmann

  Hands, Civilization, Sides

  18 Copy quote

• As scientists the two men were contrasting types—Einstein all calculation, Rutherford all experiment ... There was no doubt that as an experimenter Rutherford was a genius, one of the greatest. He worked by intuition and everything he touched turned to gold. He had a sixth sense.

  Chaim Weizmann

  Men, Two, Doubt

  14 Copy quote

• Einstein ... always spoke to me of Rutherford in the highest terms, calling him a second Newton.

  Chaim Weizmann

  Calling, Newton, Spokes

  18 Copy quote

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