Shimon Peres

"Count the dreams of your mind; if the numbers of the dreams exceeds the number of achievements, you are young."

"Early in the morning, I fell in love with the girl that later on became my wife. At that time, we were so naive. I wanted to charm her, so I read her Capital by Marx. I thought somehow she would be convinced by the strength of his criticism about capital."

"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."

"I was learning, as I did in the Ministry of Defense. I never knew, but I always learned."

"In Israel, a land lacking in natural resources, we learned to appreciate our greatest national advantage: our minds. Through creativity and innovation, we transformed barren deserts into flourishing fields and pioneered new frontiers in science and technology."

"My greatest mistake is that my dreams were too small."

"Science doesn't have flags. Science doesn't have borders."

"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."

"The problem of the Middle East is poverty more than politics."

"There is no alternative to peace. There is no sense to go to war."