“You chose God for yourselves” (Joshua 24:22),

“According to my moral outlook, we do not have the right to discriminate against even one Arab child, even if such discrimination would obtain for us all that we seek,”

“It is easier to swim in the sea than in a bathtub.”

“But we must carry on with what we began here sixty years ago, and in doing so save perhaps a remnant.”

His broad-mindedness was limited to the bounds of the Zionist discourse, as he once demonstrated when Martin Buber skeptically remarked: “We said we would redeem the land, and we meant to make it Jewish land. Why does it have to be Jewish land?” Ben-Gurion interrupted. “To bring forth bread from the earth!” Buber retorted: “Why?” “To eat!” Ben-Guri

“I fully understand your concern about the Kinneret operation. I must confess that I, too, began to have my doubts about the wisdom of it. But when I read the full text of your brilliant defense of our action in the Security Council, all my doubts were set at rest. You have convinced me that we were right, after all.”

The motivation for building is “aesthetic, religious, and transcendental,” he said, but when it is time to build, “you have to weigh and measure … The same is true with statecraft.”

“We, who want to build a new land in a wilderness out of ruins, need to learn how the deportees and persecuted people from England founded a huge, rich country with unparalleled treasures and creative power.”

Several plans aimed at saving tens of thousands of children were not implemented, in part because the British refused to grant immigration certificates.