Quotes Library

March 25, 2025

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.

Abba Eban (1915–2002), Israeli diplomat and politician, speech in London, 16 December 1970, Jay p.127

Can you think of an instance where you wasted a lot of time considering, promoting, or pursuing an alternative when the wisest solution was staring you in the face? Why were you blind to it?

So wisdom is the default position? That’s a consolation, until one realizes the legion of wrong alternatives yet to be exhausted in so many cases.


More Quotes

September 18, 2025
Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.
February 12, 2025
Why shouldn’t things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? They are so, and we are so, and they and we go well together.
November 27, 2025
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
Page 34 of 122