Quote

I'm a great believer in compromises. I do not believe in capitulation.

Amos Oz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Amos Oz
Age: 79 †
Born: 1939
Born: May 4
Died: 2018
Died: December 28
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Linguist
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Jerusalem
Middle East
Amos Klausner
Great
Believe
Capitulation
Compromises
Compromise
Believer

More quotes by Amos Oz

Image
Think about Elizabethan English, where the entire English language behaved pretty much like molten lava, like a volcano in mid-eruption. Modern Hebrew has some things in common with Elizabethan English. It is being reshaped and it's expanding very rapidly in various directions.
Amos Oz
Image
A long war is degenerating - it ruins the mind and the soul and psyche of individuals and nations.
Amos Oz
Image
Israel is a fulfilled dream. Nothing that exists here existed here a hundred years ago.
Amos Oz
Image
The very same book, even if it is translated very accurately, let's say from Hebrew into English or from English into Hebrew, becomes a different book because language is a musical instrument.
Amos Oz
Image
We all begin much much much earlier. In fact, every one of us - every nation, every individual begins hundreds, perhaps thousands of years prior to the date that appears in the passport.
Amos Oz
Image
If we don't stop somewhere, if we don't accept an unhappy compromise, unhappy for both sides, if we don't learn how to unhappily coexist and contain our burned sense of injustice - if we don't learn how to do that, we end up in a doomed state.
Amos Oz
Image
I don't think a novel's main donation, main gift, is the document. The document is there, but a novel goes beyond documentation. It goes into opening a new vista, opening a new perspective, showing familiar things in an unfamiliar way, and making the reader reconsider the documentary facts which he or she may have known before.
Amos Oz
Image
If people are pro-Israel, they are pro-Israel one-hundred-and-twenty percent. If they are anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian, they tend to be pro-Palestinian one-hundred-and-twenty percent.
Amos Oz
Image
Many intellectuals in America and in Europe, they are in the habit of taking sides: who are the bad guys? who are the good guys? They launch a demonstration against the bad guys, sign a petition in favor of the good guys, and going to sleep feeling well about themselves.
Amos Oz
Image
Everybody comes from somewhere.
Amos Oz
Image
I want Israel to live in peace with its neighbors and in peace with itself.
Amos Oz
Image
I write about reconciliation, but not as a miracle, as a slow, gradual process of mutual discovery - discovering one another.
Amos Oz
Image
I'm a great believer in compromise. I know it's not popular among young idealists.
Amos Oz
Image
In the same way in which music is made of notes and a painting is made of lines of colors, the matter of literature are words.
Amos Oz
Image
Now, Israel is a fulfillment, and as a fulfillment, it is flawed. The fact that it is flawed is not so much a testimony about the failures of Israel. No, it is a testimony about the nature of dreams.
Amos Oz
Image
She had not wanted him to but had let him have his way because ever since she was a child she had generally yielded before anyone with strong willpower, especially if it was a man, not because she was naturally submissive, but because strong male willpower gave her a feeling of safety and trust, together with acceptance and a desire to give in.
Amos Oz
Image
Words create conceptions and self-conceptions and ultimately nations. They can start and stop wars. They can would and heal. Choosing words carefully is a moral responsibility.
Amos Oz
Image
The minute we leave south Lebanon we will have to erase the word Hezbollah from our vocabulary, because the whole idea of the State of Israel versus Hezbollah was sheer folly from the outset. It most certainly no longer will be relevant when Israel returns to her internationally recognized northern border.
Amos Oz
Image
Literature is about telling stories. Now, the gift of literature is that, in some lucky cases, reading a novel or a story makes the reader more curious, more open-minded. It may open a third eye in the middle of the reader's forehead.
Amos Oz
Image
The gift of literature is that, in some lucky cases, reading a novel or a story makes the reader more curious, more open-minded.
Amos Oz