Elie Wiesel Quotes

172 Sourced Quotes

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.

Elie Wiesel
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.

Elie Wiesel
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. The Talmud tells us that by saving a single human being, man can save the world.

Elie Wiesel
Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair. I remember the killers, I remember the victims, even as I struggle to invent a thousand and one reasons to hope.

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

Elie Wiesel
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.

Elie Wiesel
Miracles in mysticism don't occupy such an important place. It's metaphor, for the peasants, for the crowds, to impress people. 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. You plunge into it. Philosophy is a slow process of logic and logical discourse: A bringing B bringing C and so forth. In mysticism you can jump from A to Z. But the ultimate objective is the same. It's knowledge. It's truth.

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

Elie Wiesel
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.

Elie Wiesel
I am myself only when I work. I work for four hours without interruption. Then I stop for my studies. But these four hours are really mine.

Elie Wiesel
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.

Elie Wiesel
God of forgiveness, do not forgive those murderers of Jewish children here.
At Auschwitz

Elie Wiesel
Of course some wars may have been necessary or inevitable, but none was ever regarded as holy. For us, a holy war is a contradiction in terms. War dehumanizes, war diminishes, war debases all those who wage it. The Talmud says, "Talmidei hukhamim marbin shalom baolam" (It is the wise men who will bring about peace). Perhaps, because wise men remember best.

Elie Wiesel
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.

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

Elie Wiesel
Some events do take place but are not true;
others are, although they never occurred.

Elie Wiesel
If you ask me what I want to achieve, it's to create an awareness, which is already the beginning of teaching.

Elie Wiesel
Not all games are innocent. Some come dangerously close to cruelty.

Elie Wiesel
What is abnormal is that I am normal. 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.

Elie Wiesel
Some writings could sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.

Elie Wiesel
We thought it would be enough to tell of the tidal wave of hatred which broke over the Jewish people for men everywhere to decide once and for all to put an end to hatred of anyone who is "different" — whether black or white, Jew or Arab, Christian or Moslem — anyone whose orientation differs politically, philosophically, sexually.

Elie Wiesel
The night was gone. The morning star was shining in the sky. I too had become a completely different person. The student of the Talmud, the child that I was, had been consumed in the flames. There remained only a shape that looked like me. A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it.

Elie Wiesel
Just as there are predatory birds, so there are predatory ideas: I came under their spell....Just as the survivors say that no one will ever understand the victims, what I must tell you is that you will never understand the executioners.

Elie Wiesel
All my writing was born out of anger. In order to contain it, I had to write. If I had not written, I would have exploded.

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

Elie Wiesel
The most important question a human being has to face... What is it? The question, Why are we here?

Elie Wiesel
They called him Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname.

Elie Wiesel
There are moments when I think it will never end, that it will last indefinitely. It's like the rain. Here the rain, like everything else, suggests permanence and eternity. I say to myself: it's raining today and it's going to rain tomorrow and the next day, the next week and the next century.

Elie Wiesel
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.

Elie Wiesel
I had anger but never hate. Before the war, I was too busy studying to hate. After the war, I thought, What's the use? To hate would be to reduce myself.

Elie Wiesel