Elie Wiesel quotes:

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  • Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.

  • I wanted to write a commentary on the Bible, to write about the Talmud, about celebration, about the great eternal subjects: love and happiness.

  • It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.

  • Historically, I come from Jewish history. I had the classic upbringing in the Yeshiva, learning, learning, and more learning.

  • In Jewish history there are no coincidences.

  • Most people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.

  • No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.

  • No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.

  • That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life - that is what is abnormal.

  • I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to remember. No other people has such an obsession with memory.

  • I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason.

  • The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.

  • In my tradition, one must wait until one has learned a lot of Bible and Talmud and the Prophets to handle mysticism. This isn't instant coffee. There is no instant mysticism.

  • I was very, very religious. And of course I wrote about it in 'Night.' I questioned God's silence. So I questioned. I don't have an answer for that. Does it mean that I stopped having faith? No. I have faith, but I question it.

  • A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.

  • In any society, fanatics who hate don't hate only me - they hate you, too. They hate everybody.

  • Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.

  • Human beings should be held accountable. Leave God alone. He has enough problems.

  • When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.

  • Look, if I were alone in the world, I would have the right to choose despair, solitude and self-fulfillment. But I am not alone.

  • For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.

  • What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically.

  • I've given my life to the principle and the ideal of memory, and remembrance.

  • Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

  • The Bible is not only laws, it's also stories. It begins, 'In the beginning God created Heaven.' If I had written these words, I wouldn't have written anything else; it's just enough.

  • My greatest disappointment is that I believe that those of us who went through the war and tried to write about it, about their experience, became messengers. We have given the message, and nothing changed.

  • When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.

  • I'm a teacher and a writer; my life is words. When I see the denigration of language, it hurts me, and it's easy to denigrate a word by trivializing it.

  • If I were in the government, I would persuade the prime minister to see the beauty in the fact that people see Israel as a haven - from their sadness to their hope.

  • Religion is not man's relationship to God, it is man's relationship to man.

  • Someone who hates one group will end up hating everyone - and, ultimately, hating himself or herself.

  • That is my major preoccupation, memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it.

  • Hope is like peace. It is not a gift from God. It is a gift only we can give one another.

  • I would like to see real peace and a state of Israel living peacefully alongside a state of Palestine.

  • I don't like docudramas. Documentaries should not go together with fiction, or half-fiction or quarter-fiction. The two should not go together. They cannot mix.

  • There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.

  • After all, God is God because he remembers.

  • Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.

  • One always goes back to one's childhood in the beginning, and I come from a very religious family and surrounding. Very religious.

  • I remember, May 1944: I was 15-and-a-half, and I was thrown into a haunted universe where the story of the human adventure seemed to swing irrevocably between horror and malediction.

  • I never teach the same course twice.

  • I love teaching.

  • I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.

  • Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.

  • I will say, with memoir, you must be honest. You must be truthful.

  • The Bible is not only laws, it's also stories.

  • In the concentration camps, we discovered this whole universe where everyone had his place. The killer came to kill, and the victims came to die.

  • Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.

  • For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.

  • The Jewish tradition of learning-is learning. Adam chose knowledge instead of immortality.

  • Fanaticism is the greatest threat today. Literally, the 21st century threatened by fanatics, and we have fanatics in every religion, unfortunately, and what can we do against them? Words nothing else, I'm against violence but only words.

  • With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don't think it's human to become an agent of the angel of death.

  • The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

  • Sometimes I am asked if I know 'the response to Auschwitz; I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don't even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response.

  • I listen to music when I write. I need the musical background. Classical music. I'm behind the times. I'm still with Baroque music, Gregorian chant, the requiems, and with the quartets of Beethoven and Brahms. That is what I need for the climate, for the surroundings, for the landscape: the music.

  • Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.

  • What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.

  • Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.

  • Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.

  • It is up to us to determine whether the years ahead will be for humankind a curse or a blessing. We always must remember that it is given to men and women to choose life and living, not death and destruction.

  • In those dark times, one rose to the very heights of humanity by simply remaining human.

  • Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning. The tragedy of man is that he doesn't know how to distinguish between day and night. He says things at night that should only be said by day.

  • Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.

  • One person of integrity can make a difference.

  • I never compared Nazis into communism, but communism was the same thing, the end justifies the means. Whatever the means.

  • Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.

  • In the word question, there is a beautiful word - quest. I love that word. We are all partners in a quest. The essential questions have no answers. You are my question, and I am yours - and then there is dialogue. The moment we have answers, there is no dialogue. Questions unite people.

  • There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

  • But the forces of evil have not abdicated. The malevolent ghosts of hatred are resurgent with a fury and a boldness that are as astounding as they are nauseating: ethnic conflicts, religious riots, anti-Semitic incidents here, there, and everywhere. What is wrong with these morally degenerate people that they abuse their freedom, so recently won?

  • Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.

  • Do you know what laughter is? I'll tell you. It's God's mistake. When God made man in order to bend him to his wishes he carelessly gave him the gift of laughter.

  • I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

  • I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.

  • Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.

  • I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.

  • It has become increasingly clear that Hungarian authorities are encouraging the whitewashing of tragic and criminal episodes in Hungary's past, namely the wartime Hungarian governments' involvement in the deportation and murder of hundreds of thousands of its Jewish citizens. I found it outrageous that the Speaker of the Hungarian National Assembly could participate in a ceremony honoring a Hungarian fascist ideologue

  • No human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?

  • Man, as long as he lives, is immortal. One minute before his death he shall be immortal. But one minute later, God wins.

  • The opposite of faith is not heresy but indifference

  • The opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

  • Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.

  • They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions. (v)

  • It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory.

  • Memory is the keyword which combines past with present, past and future.

  • I cannot cure everybody. I cannot help everybody. But to tell the lonely person that I am not far or different from that lonely person, that I am with him or her, that's all I think we can do and we should do.

  • My ambition really was, even as a child, to be a writer, a commentator, and a teacher, but a teacher of Talmud.

  • I don't want my past to become anyone else's future.

  • Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.

  • Every moment is a new beginning.

  • Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor - never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten.

  • you can do something. You can, even for one person Don't turn away; help. Because those who suffer, often suffer not because of the person or the group that inflicts the suffering; they seem to suffer because nobody cares.

  • The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria...

  • Mankind needs peace more than ever, for our entire planet, threatened by nuclear war, is in danger of total destruction. A destruction only man can provoke, only man can prevent.

  • The yellow star? Oh well, what of it? You dont die of it.

  • When you die and go to heaven our maker is not going to ask, 'why didn't you discover the cure for such and such? why didn't you become the Messiah?' The only question we will be asked in that precious moment is 'why didn't you become you?'

  • One more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live.

  • Today, as yesterday, a nation is judged by its attitude towards refugees,

  • We are all teachers, or should be. Anyone who relays experience to another person is a teacher. Not to transmit your experience is to betray it.

  • Better that one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, he has decided, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.

  • Remember also that it is not knowledge but the yearning for knowledge that makes for a complete, accomplished man. Such a man does not stand still but perseveres in the face of adversity, nor does he remain untouched by the pain cause by absence. On the contrary, he recognizes himself in each cry, uttered or repressed, in the smallest rift, in the most pressing need.

  • Never again becomes more than a slogan: It's a prayer, a promise, a vow. There will never again be hatred, people say. Never again jail and torture. Never again the suffering of innocent people, or the shooting of starving, frightened, terrified children. And never again the glorification of base, ugly, dark violence. It's a prayer.

  • We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children, between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it. Between inflicting suffering and humiliation on our fellow man and offering him the solidarity and hope he deserves. Or not.

  • No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them

  • I believe in superstitions. You don't talk about a child who hasn't been born.

  • True enemies aren't always the ones who hate each other.

  • A mn ages hs enemy because he hates his own hate. He says to himself: I hate him not because he's my enemy, not because he hates me, but because he arouses me to hate.

  • Violence is not the answer. Terrorism is the most dangerous of answers.

  • In the beginning there was faith - which is childish; trust - which is vain; and illusion - which is dangerous.

  • Music does not replace words, it gives tone to the words

  • I have to be self-conscious of what I'm trying to do with my life.

  • We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark.

  • No human being is illegal.

  • It was like a page torn from a history book, from some historical novel about the captivity of babylon or Spanish Inquisition.

  • Nobody is stronger, nobody is weaker than someone who came back. There is nothing you can do to such a person because whatever you could do is less than what has already been done to him. We have already paid the price.

  • I spent most of my time talking to God more than to people.

  • God made (human beings) because he loves stories.

  • After my father's death, nothing could touch me any more.

  • The primary task of a Jew in turbulent times is to be Jewish.

  • I write to understand as much as to be understood.

  • Why is war such an easy option? Why does peace remain such an elusive goal? We know statesmen skilled at waging war, but where are those dedicated enough to humanity to find a way to avoid war

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