Elie Wiesel Quotes

What [Franz] Kafka says about the Tower of Babel: In the beginning there were actually many languages, and then as a punishment God gave the world a single language. And then they stopped understanding each other.

I was 15, not 14, when I was inside there [Auschwitz], 15, and for me both were actually a surprise.

Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible.

Memory feeds a culture, nourishes hope and makes a human, human.

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

From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.

If enough people are sensitive to the tragedy of Tibet, I think it will produce a change politically as well. But furthermore, it's important for the people in Tibet. Now communication is such [that] people know what is happening. Even Tibetan people would know that the Interfaith or the international group of religious people - that everybody who is religious is taking up their cause. It would help them a lot if we give them courage, and that in itself is enough.

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.

The sky is so close to the sea that it is difficult to tell which is reflected in the other, which one needs the other, which one is dominating the other.

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

[My approach to the Bible, history does really matter.] Everything matters. But I have priorities. For instance, for me to know whether there were two Isaiahs or one is less important than the text itself. Of course I read the arguments for and against. But it's not my task in life to say there were two or three authors of Isaiah's book, or how many authors there were of Deuteronomy. This is not what I'm doing.

I think [Sacrifice of Isaac] is the most important event in the Bible except for Sinai.

There is much to be done, there is much that can be done... One person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our lives will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.

Life is really fascinated only by death. It vibrates only when it comes in contact with death.

I rarely speak about God. To God yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But open discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And yet He is there, in silence, in filigree.

When adults wage war, children perish.

I needed to know that there was such a thing as love and that it brought smiles and joy in its wake.

My good friends, we are all waiting. We are waiting, if not for the Messiah, as such, we are waiting for the messianic moment. And the messianic moment is what each and every one of us tries to build, meaning a certain area of humanity that links us to all those who are human and, therefore, desperately trying to fight despair as humanly as possible and - I hope - with some measure of success.

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.

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.

Man walks the moon but his soul remains riveted to earth. Once upon a time it was the opposite.

What of the Exodus? That too, is a wonderful story, but from the viewpoint of an historian, it is - to use a word scholars love - problematic. Let's say there are doubts, to say the least, among many scholars, as to whether the Exodus actually occurred. That's a historical issue.

Because I survived, I must do everything possible to help others.

[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.

Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.

And I, the for­mer mys­tic, was think­ing: Yes, man is stronger, greater than God. When Adam and Eve de­ceived You, You chased them from par­adise. When You were dis­pleased by Noah’s generation, You brought down the Flood. When Sodom lost Your fa­vour, You caused the heav­ens to rain down fire and damna­tion. But look at these men whom You have be­trayed, al­low­ing them to be tortured, slaugh­tered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? They pray be­fore You! They praise Your name!

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.

It always hurts when you lose a secret.

There is no word in Hebrew for religion, by the way.

At Auschwitz, not only man died, but also the idea of man. To live in a world where there is nothing anymore, where the executioner acts as god, as judge-many wanted no part of it. It was its own heart the world incinerated at Auschwitz.

Once upon a time refugee meant somebody who has a refuge, found a place, a haven where he could find refuge.

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.

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

Josiah has a tremendous reputation in the text. He rediscovered the Book of the Law; you remember how Hilkiah the High Priest somehow found it [2 Kings 22:8].

Even in darkness it is possible to create light.

A word is worth a thousand pictures.

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

The only way for us to help ourselves is to help others and to listen to each other's stories.

The whole community must be saved [in Tibet].

I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it . . .

Refugee today means somebody who has no home. No homeland. No security. No government to protect him or her. And it is of course one feels not only uprooted, one feels useless. One feels always surrounded by hostile forces. Arousing suspicion.

When I say it doesn't make much difference, I mean in terms of the importance of the piece of literature.

Had the situation not been so tragic, we might have laughed.

Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

There are no accidents, only encounters with destiny!

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.

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

I have absolutely no problem with the young Germans. I even feel sorry for the young Germans because to be maybe sons or daughters of killers is different than them to be sons and daughters of the victims. And I felt sorry for them. I still do.