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

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

We cannot indefinitely avoid depressing subject matter, particularly it it is true, and in the subsequent quarter century the world has had to hear a story it would have preferred not to hear - the story of how a cultured people turned to genocide, and how the rest of the world, also composed of cultured people, remained silent in the face of genocide. (v)

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.

[Memory] is a passion no less powerful or pervasive than love. It is [the ability] to live in more than one world, to prevent the past from fading, and to call upon the future to illuminate it.

Which is worse? Killing with hate or killing without hate?

I wrote my first book, I published it in 1955, it was in Yiddish and it was called And The World Was Silent.