Elie Wiesel Quotes

172 Sourced Quotes

I believe mysticism is a very serious endeavor. One must be equipped for it. One doesn't study calculus before studying arithmetic. In my tradition, one must wait until one has learned a lot of Bible and Talmud and the Prophets to handle mysticism. This isn't instant coffee. There is no instant mysticism.

Elie Wiesel
The only place where I felt at home, on familiar ground, was the Jewish cemetery. And yet I had never set foot in it before. Children had been forbidden to enter.

Elie Wiesel
[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.

Elie Wiesel
Every book that I have written corresponds to a certain immediacy.

Elie Wiesel
The more you ask certain questions, the more dangerous they become.

Elie Wiesel
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.

Elie Wiesel
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?

Elie Wiesel
A recollection. The time: After the war. The place: Paris. A young man struggles to readjust to life. His mother, his father, his small sister are gone. He is alone. On the verge of despair. And yet he does not give up. On the contrary, he strives to find a place among the living. He acquires a new language. He makes a few friends who, like himself, believe that the memory of evil will serve as a shield against evil; that the memory of death will serve as a shield against death.

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
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
Perhaps fate isn't blind after all. Perhaps it's capable of fantasy, even compassion.

Elie Wiesel
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....Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

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
I am much more afraid of my good deeds that please me than of my bad deeds that repel me.

Elie Wiesel
I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.

Elie Wiesel
Better that one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, he has decided, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.

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

Elie Wiesel
I think the Messianic concept, which is the Jewish offering to mankind, is a great victory. What does it mean? It means that history has a sense, a meaning, a direction; it goes somewhere, and necessarily in a good direction--the Messiah.

Elie Wiesel
Suffering pulls us farther away from other human beings. It builds a wall made of cries and contempt to separate us.

Elie Wiesel
The yellow star?
Oh well, what of it?
You dont die of it.

Elie Wiesel
I wanted to come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death. So that you could prepare yourselves while there was still time. To live? I don't attach any importance to my life any more. I'm alone. No, I wanted to come back, and to warn you. And see how it is, no one will listen to me.

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
It seemed as impossible to conceive of Auschwitz with God as to conceive of Auschwitz without God. Therefore, everything had to be reassessed because everything had changed. With one stroke, mankind's achievements seemed to have been erased. Was Auschwitz a consequence or an aberration of "civilization"? All we know is that Auschwitz called that civilization into question as it called into question everything that had preceded Auschwitz. Scientific abstraction, social and economic contention, nationalism, xenophobia, religious fanaticism, racism, mass hysteria. All found their ultimate expression in Auschwitz.

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

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

Elie Wiesel