Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles is not a realist.

“Anyone who doesn’t believe in miracles is not a realist.” Thus spoke David Ben-Gurion, the founding father of Israel, a man who had witnessed both the desolation of exile and the rebirth of a nation. His words strike like thunder through the narrow corridors of the human mind, shattering the illusion that reality is bound only by reason. For in this paradox, Ben-Gurion reveals a profound truth: that miracles are not violations of reality—they are expressions of its deepest potential. To deny them is not wisdom, but blindness; to believe in them is not fantasy, but understanding.

When Ben-Gurion uttered these words, he did not speak as a dreamer lost in hope, but as a realist who had seen the impossible become flesh. The world he lived in had told him that the Jewish people, scattered for centuries, could never again gather as a nation, that their language was dead, their land barren, their enemies many. Yet through courage, sacrifice, and an unbreakable faith, the ashes of persecution gave rise to the flame of renewal. In 1948, when the State of Israel was declared, it was not mere politics—it was, in his eyes, a miracle born from human will aligned with divine purpose. He saw then what the ancients always knew: that the boundary between the possible and the impossible is thinner than we think, and it is crossed not by logic, but by belief.

To the ancient sages, a miracle was not merely an act of divine magic—it was a revelation, the moment when hidden potential bursts through the surface of despair. The Red Sea parting before Moses, the phoenix rising from its ashes, the dawn following the darkest night—all these are reflections of the same law: that reality itself is charged with mystery. The realist who truly observes the world, as Ben-Gurion reminds us, cannot help but see this mystery. Every heartbeat, every sunrise, every act of forgiveness in a world of cruelty—these are miracles too subtle for the blind but too real for the wise to ignore.

Consider the story of Nelson Mandela, who spent twenty-seven years in a cell, robbed of freedom, yet emerged not with vengeance, but with peace. The realist would have called such a transformation impossible; the cynic would have called it naïve. Yet history calls it a miracle of the human spirit. Like Ben-Gurion, Mandela understood that realism without hope is merely despair in disguise. True realism sees the full scope of what humanity can achieve when faith, endurance, and purpose come together.

There is a deeper wisdom here. The world, Ben-Gurion teaches, is not divided between the rational and the miraculous—it is both at once. To be a realist is to see reality whole: to recognize that beneath the laws of physics and the rules of men, there moves another force—the quiet power of belief, of courage, of vision that refuses to die. Those who see only the surface mistake limitation for truth; those who look deeper know that reality, like the desert, conceals springs beneath its sands.

In our age of skepticism, this truth is easily forgotten. We worship reason but neglect wonder; we praise intellect but ignore awe. Yet miracles still unfold—each time a disease is cured, each time enemies reconcile, each time a human being forgives the unforgivable. To deny these is to deny the living pulse of the world. The realist, as Ben-Gurion says, is not the one who accepts only what he can see—but the one who knows that the unseen shapes all that is seen.

So let this teaching be written upon your heart: to believe in miracles is to believe in the full measure of reality. Do not mistake cynicism for wisdom, nor doubt for depth. The ancients knew that the eyes that see most clearly are those that see with faith as well as reason. Open your eyes to wonder; open your mind to what the heart already knows. Live as one who expects the miraculous—not as a fool who waits idly for magic, but as a worker who builds the bridge by which the impossible may cross into the world.

For, as Ben-Gurion reminds us, the realist who believes only in what is will never shape what can be. But the realist who dares to believe in miracles—that one becomes the creator of them.