Winston Churchil as quoted in the book "Closing the Ring"
“The Greeks rival the Jews in being the
most politically minded race in the world. No matter how forlorn their
circumstances or how grave the peril to their country, they are always
divided into many parties, with many leaders who fight among themselves
with desperate vigour. It has been well said that wherever there are
three Jews it will be found that there are two Prime Ministers and one
leader of the Opposition. The same is true of this other ancient race,
whose stormy and endless struggle for life stretches back to the
fountains of spring of human thought. No two races have set such mark
upon the world. Both have shown a capacity for survival, in spite of
unending perils and sufferings from external oppressors, matched only by
their own ceaseless feuds, quarrels and convulsions. The passage of
several thousand years sees no change in their characteristics and no
diminution of their original vitality. They have survived in spite of
all that the world could do against them, and all they could do against
themselves, and each of them from angles so different have left us the
inheritance of their genius and wisdom. No two cities have counted more
with mankind than Athens and Jerusalem. Their messages in religion,
philosophy and art have been the main guiding lights of modern faith and
culture. Centuries of foreign rule and indescribable, endless
oppression leave them still living, active communities and forces in the
modern world, quarreling among themselves with insatiable vivacity.
Personally I have always been on the side of both, and believed in their
invincible power to survive internal strife and the world tides
threatening their extinction.
