Elie Wiesel Quotes

172 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

Elie Wiesel
Bread, soup - these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.

Elie Wiesel
For the good of all, I say: Be careful, the brutality of the world must not be more powerful or attractive than love and friendship.

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

Elie Wiesel
Terrorism must be outlawed by all civilized nations — not explained or rationalized, but fought and eradicated. Nothing can, nothing will justify the murder of innocent people and helpless children.

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

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

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

Elie Wiesel
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.

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

Elie Wiesel
A destruction only man can provoke, only man can prevent. Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures, it is our gift to each other.

Elie Wiesel
Words grow, age, die, and I am still interested in that metamorphosis.

Elie Wiesel
The very existence of that town in the midst of so much hostility was a miracle then and is a miracle now.
On his town, Sighet

Elie Wiesel
On why he waited ten years to write about the Holocaust on his first book:
I didn't want to use the wrong words. I was afraid that words might betray it. I waited. I'm still not sure that it was the wrong move, or the right move, that is, whether to choose language or silence.

Elie Wiesel
Sometimes you don't have to speak in order to be heard, not when the message is so powerful.

Elie Wiesel
But where was I to start? The world is so vast, I shall start with the country I knew best, my own. But my country is so very large. I had better start with my town. But my town, too, is large. I had best start with my street. No, my home. No, my family. Never mind, I shall start with myself.

Elie Wiesel