Elie Wiesel Quotes

Some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come. As for me, I had ceased to pray. I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice.

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

I developed an anger at [Moses] Mendelssohn. Later, I read the book. I realized there was nothing subversive in it.

How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in furnaces? Praised be Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar?

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.

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed.

[Tibet] never sought any territory. All it wanted is the conquest of the soul, that people should attain a kind of inner sovereignty, inner independence, inner freedom. And inner strength to attain the absolute.

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

There are so many who know more than I do, who understand the world better than I do. I would be truly learned, a great scholar, if only I could retain everything I've learned from those I have known. But then would I still be me? And isn't all that only words? Words grow old, too; they change their meaning and their usage. They get sick just as we do; they die of their wounds and then they are relegated to the dust of dictionaries. And where am I in all this?

It is by his freedom that a man knows himself, by his sovereignty over his own life that a man measures himself.

In spite of despair, hope must exist. In spite of suffering, humanity must prevail. And in spite of all the differences in the world, the worst enemy, the worst peril, is indifference.

God made (human beings) because he loves stories.

You know how many reasons we have to be desperate and despairing, the world is not learning anything. We have seen that.

Certain things, certain events, seem inexplicable only for a time: up to the moment when the veil is torn aside.

His cold eyes stared at me. At last, he said wearily: "I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.

When you listen to a witness, you become a witness.

Humanity would never tolerate it

War is like night, she said. It covers everything.

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

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

I am looking for the word which is there and shouldn't be there. I wonder, why is it there? Or I look for problems: the Akedah [the Binding of Isaac - Genesis 22]. It still baffles me. Each time I read it - and I read it at least twice a year - each time I discover new layers in it. Always. So this is of more concern to me than the minimalists.

I'm not a political person, and their ambitions are not mine. They want power. I don't want power.

There are real people behind the [Bible] stories.

Listen to me, kid. Don't forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every many for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even you father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. Let me give you good advice: stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your old father. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations.

Every moment is a new beginning.

Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.

The act of writing is for me often nothing more than the secret or conscious desire to carve words on a tombstone: to the memory of a town forever vanished, to the memory of a childhood in exile, to the memory of all those I loved and who, before I could tell them I loved them, went away.

I've organised for the last years, since I got the Nobel Prize actually, Anatomy of Hate Conferences all over the world, what is hate. Didn't help but at least they explored it.

I remember one day I came home and shouted to my grandmother, "Grandma, Sarah is pregnant!" Poor Sarah! For weeks before I had read how difficult it was for her to get pregnant. "Grandma! I have news for you!" "What did you learn?" "I have news, Grandma: Sarah is pregnant!" [Genesis 16 - 21].

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

In my town we studied the five Books of Moses, but rarely the prophets. We studied the Talmud so much that I sometimes knew the prophets because of the prophetic quotations in the Talmud. We almost never studied the prophets themselves.

I learned to trust the threats of enemies before the promises of friends.

If God exists, how can we lay claim to freedom, since He is its beginning and its end?

I make a difference between genocide and Holocaust. Holocaust was mainly Jewish, that was the only people, to the last Jew, sentenced to die for one reason, for being Jewish, that's all.

We are all brothers and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive. (pg. 39)

If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life --- mine or that of my fellow man --- is not an offering to the other, what are we doing on this earth?

Today again the teacher is the important thing, but on the other hand anti-Semitism is growing today. No doubt about it. All over the world, especially in Europe, and it's true they begin with anti-Israeli attitudes and then it's so strong that it runs over and becomes anti-Semitic.

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

Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.

What I do, I want to do with all my being.

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 would not like to draw analogies, with the past.Governments, leaders, intellectuals, mainly intellectuals who should know the ethical dimensions, are so important, so essential to culture, religion, to civilization, and to our own lives. And that means what? It means not to be indifferent, not to stand idly by. That is a biblical commandment that we are committed.

Only one enemy is worse than despair: indifference. In every area of human creativity, indifference is the enemy; indifference of evil is worse than evil, because it is also sterile.

There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.

Even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. That it is possible to feel free inside a prison. That even in exile, friendship exists and can become an anchor. That one instant before dying, man is still immortal.

In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see. In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way. When someone suffers, and it is not you, that person comes first. One's very suffering gives one priority. . . . To watch over one who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God.

Questions outlive the answers.

The impact of the holocaust on believers as well as unbelievers, on Jews as well as Christians, has not yet been evaluated. Not deeply, not enough.