Elie Wiesel Quotes

172 Sourced Quotes

600,000 to 800,00 human beings were murdered. We know now, as we knew then, they could have been saved, and they were not.
Recalling the genocide in Rwanda

Elie Wiesel
If anything can, it is memory that will save humanity.

Elie Wiesel
Man prefers to blame himself for all possible sins and crimes rather than come to the conclusion that God is capable of the most flagrant injustice. I still blush every time I think of the way God makes fun of human beings, his favorite toys.

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
A man who is fighting for the future of mankind is not waiting for torture, he's waiting for — the Revolution.

Elie Wiesel
That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS.

Elie Wiesel
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?

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

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

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
None of us is in a position to eliminate war, but it is our obligation to denounce it and expose it in all its hideousness. War leaves no victors, only victims.

Elie Wiesel
An immoral society betrays humanity because it betrays the basis for humanity, which is memory. An immoral society deals with memory as some politicians deal with politics. A moral society is committed to memory: I believe in memory. The Greek word alethia means Truth, Things that cannot be forgotten. I believe in those things that cannot be forgotten and because of that so much in my work deals with memory... What do all my books have in common? A commitment to memory.

Elie Wiesel
Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?

Elie Wiesel
Indifference is the sign of sickness, a sickness of the soul more contagious than any other.

Elie Wiesel
I didn't want to write a book on the Holocaust. To write such a book, to be responsible for such experiences, for such words — I didn't want that. I wanted to write a commentary on the Bible, to write about the Talmud, about celebration, about the great eternal subjects: love and happiness.

Elie Wiesel
I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed, and perverted by the enemies of mankind. And I continue to cling to words because it is up to us to transform them into instruments of comprehension rather than contempt. It is up to us to choose whether we wish to use them to curse or to heal, to wound or to console.

Elie Wiesel
When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.

Elie Wiesel
I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it...

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
We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark.

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

Elie Wiesel
Be careful with words, they're dangerous. Be wary of them. They begat either demons or angels. It's up to you to give life to one or the other. Be careful, I tell you, nothing is as dangerous as giving free rein to words

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
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
For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.

Elie Wiesel