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.

The most important thing in life is to dare. The most complicated thing in life is to be afraid. The smartest thing in the world is to try to be a moral person.

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.

They thought that I was a man with reasonable judgment, so I was never under pressure from my parents; I could do whatever I wanted. I never had a negative word from them, nothing whatsoever.

I don't think anybody who carries a rifle carries the future. Because I don't believe that you can really change the world by killing and shooting. You have the change it by creating and competing.

You can kill a thousand; you can bring an end to life; you cannot kill an idea.

Leading the Jewish people is not easy -- we are a divided, obstinate, highly individualistic people who have cultivated faith, sharp wittedness and polemics to a very high level.