Elie Wiesel Quotes

I'll tell you what: I believe mysticism is a very serious endeavor. One must be equipped for it.

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

Abraham is trying to obey God, but not to kill. I feel that moment is one of the defining moments of Jewish faith.

Fanaticism in many lands has surfaced as the greatest threat to the world. Indifference to its consequences would be a serious mistake.

I did not weep, and it pained me that i could not weep. But I had no more tears. And, in the depths of my being, in the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might perhaps have found something like--free at last!

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

Simply because, one hand, there are the haters, The hater has power. All we can do is oppose it, or one becomes an accomplice.

... True, we are often too weak to stop injustices; but the least we can do is to protest against them. True, we are too poor to eliminate hunger; but in feeding one child, we protest against hunger. True, we are too timid and powerless to take on all the guards of all the political prisons in the world; but in offering our solidarity to one prisoner we denounce all the tormentors. True, we are powerless against death; but as long as we help one man, one woman, one child live one hour longer in safety and dignity, we affirm man's [woman's] right to live.

Usually I get up early every morning and from 6:00 to 10:00 I write. The rest of the time I study and prepare my work or I do other things. But four hours a day are exclusively devoted to writing.

The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Indifference creates evil. Hatred is evil itself. Indifference is what allows evil to be strong, what gives it power.

The Tibetan religion has a past. And furthermore it has such an appeal. There again young people today are drawn to Buddhism and to Tibet. It's not only because of the Dalai Lama. It's because of what Tibet represents. There is a vast reservoir of knowledge, of mystical knowledge, which can be found in Tibet.The Chinese shouldn't be afraid of that really. They have other means of survival.

Therefore, all my adult life, since I began my life as an author, or as a teacher, I always try to listen to the victim.

I do not deal with the text [of the Bible] scientifically. I read it, I'm interested in its layers of meaning, but my relation to it is much more an emotional one.

Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.

Bite your lips, little brother...Don't cry. Keep your anger, your hate, for another day, for later. The day will come but not now...Wait. Clench your teeth and wait.

[Moses] Mendelssohn was a religious Jew. I felt sorry for him.

Peace is our gift to each other.

The more we know, the more pain we have. But because we are human beings, this must be. Otherwise we become objects rather than subjects.

Life is not a fist. Life is an open hand waiting for some other hand to enter it.

Be careful with words, they're dangerous. Be wary of them. They begat either demons or angels. It's up to you to give life to one or the other. Be careful, I tell you, nothing is as dangerous as giving free rein to words

Naturally, the human being wants to forget pain.

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?

I thought that culture and education are the shield. An educated person cannot do certain things and, and be educated, you cannot, and there they were, killing children day after day.

Everything is in it: the promise and the hope and the fear and the challenge and the defiance. The test is a double test: Just as God tested Abraham, Abraham tested God: "Let's see if you really want me to go ahead with it and kill my son." Then the angel says, "Do not raise your hand against the boy" [Genesis 22:12]. It was the Angel of God who says this, not God. God was embarrassed. [All laugh]

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

My anger rises up within faith and not outside it.

For the good of all, I say: Be careful, the brutality of the world must not be more powerful or attractive than love and friendship.

I have tried to keep memory alive... I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.

Man’s strength resides in his capacity and desire to elevate himself, so as to attain the good. To travel step by step toward the heights. And that is all he can do. To reach heaven and remain there is beyond his powers: Even Moses had to return to earth. Is it the same for evil?

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

I am not so naïve as to believe that this slim volume will change the course of history or shake the conscience of the world. Books no longer have the power they once did. Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.

..you do not leave a library; if you do what it wants you to do, you are taking it with you.

Acutely aware of the poverty of my means, language became obstacle. At every page I thought, 'That's not it.' So I began again with other verbs and other images. No, that wasn't it either. But what exactly was that it I was searching for? It must have been all that eludes us, hidden behind a veil so as not to be stolen, usurped and trivialized. Words seemed weak and pale.

As you know, I describe Shirat ha-Yam as part of an epic story that has qualities of history and which also has qualities of the mythological, of an epic.

Which is better, truth that is a lie or the lie that is truth?

The philosophers are wrong: it is not words that kill, it is silence.

All those who love thrillers will find in Michael Alexiades's first novel a source of great pleasure and satisfaction. It combines suspense and knowledge, experience and imagination. His grateful readers will now wait for the next.

Occasionally, I come to moments of anguish in the text.

Only fanatics — in religion as well as in politics — can find a meaning in someone else’s death.

After all, God is God because he remembers.

I'm not a military man. I wish I were, then maybe I could give some advice.

I think so. 9/11 has been a turning point in American history, there's no doubt about that.

To remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all.

In my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one. Just as the past Lingers in the present, all my writings after night, including those that deal with biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic themes, profoundly bear it's stamp, and cannot be understood if one has not read this very first of my works. Why did I write it? Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of the madness, the immense, terrifying madness that had erupted in history and in the conscience of mankind?

A Jew must be sensitive to the pain of all human beings. A Jew cannot remain indifferent to human suffering... The mission of the Jewish people has never been to make the world more Jewish, but to make it more human.

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.

No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has escaped the kingdom of night.

I don't think [governments] use [religious repression ] as a weapon, they use it as a as a means of - of oppression. To stifle opposition. To mute resistance.