Elie Wiesel Quotes

172 Sourced Quotes

I did not weep, and it pained me that i could not weep. But I had no more tears. And, in the depths of my being, in the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might perhaps have found something like--free at last!

Elie Wiesel
The deeper the nostalgia and the more complete the fear, the purer, the richer the word and the secret.

Elie Wiesel
The Jewish tradition of learning-is learning. Adam chose knowledge instead of immortality.

Elie Wiesel
He wants to see whether we are capable of overcoming out base instincts, of killing the Satan within ourselves. We have no right to despair. And if he punishes us mercilessly, it is a sign that He loves us that much more...

Elie Wiesel
Paris: city of encounters, of furtive and painful discoveries. All isms converge there, including the anti-isms, all the revolutionaries too, including the counterrevolutionaries.

Elie Wiesel
There is Israel, for us at least. What no other generation had, we have. We have Israel in spite of all the dangers, the threats and the wars, we have Israel. We can go to Jerusalem. Generations and generations could not and we can.

Elie Wiesel
No commandment surpasses the one concerning the liberation of hostages, for they are among the starving, the thirsting, the stripped, always in danger of death.

Elie Wiesel
Drawn to childhood, the old man will seek it in a thousand different ways.

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

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

Elie Wiesel
What is man? Ally of God or simply his toy? His triumph or his fall?

Elie Wiesel
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.

Elie Wiesel
Man asks and God replies but we don't understand his replies because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die.

Elie Wiesel
Man, by definition, is born a stranger: coming from nowhere, he is thrust into an alien world which existed before him-a world which didn't need him. And which will survive him.

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
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
If there is a single theme that dominates all my writings, all my obsessions, it is that of memory-because I fear forgetfulness as much as hatred and death.

Elie Wiesel
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.

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
Rejected by mankind, the condemned do not go so far as to reject it in turn. Their faith in history remains unshaken, and one may well wonder why. They do not despair. The proof: they persist in surviving not only to survive, but to testify. The victims elect to become witnesses.

Elie Wiesel
It is true that not all the victims were Jews. But all the Jews were victims.

Elie Wiesel
Time does not heal all wounds; there are those that remain painfully open.

Elie Wiesel
I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone—terribly alone in a world without God and without man.

Elie Wiesel
Yet another last night. The last night at home, the last night in the ghetto, the last night in the train, and, now, the last night in Buna. How much longer were our lives to be dragged out from one 'last night' to another?

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

Elie Wiesel